Dear FontStructors,

Many congratulations to all those who participated in another amazing and record-breaking competition. With almost 100 entries, this was our most popular competition ever. I hope everyone had as much fun designing as I did watching the FontStruct gallery flood with color*.

Unfortunately it’s not possible, within a single blog post, to mention every design which deserves inclusion. In this short post, we can only hope reflect on some recurrent themes, show a few of the designs which caught the judges’ eyes, and announce the lucky prizewinners – I can only curse the fiendish and unrelenting creativity of the FontStruct Community (that’s you!) for this sad state of affairs. I encourage everyone who reads this post to survey ALL of the entries, many of which are enhanced in their descriptions and comments by samples and intriguing backstories.

The Geometrics

A number of competition entries had a very clear geometrical focus, inspired by Bauhaus or classical modernism more generally. Lessons in Composition, Vol. 1 by elysian7403 for example, the second FontStruction shown below, made a strong impression with its exploration of the interplay between negative space and color.

From top to bottom: zopaka eYe/FS by elmoyenique, Lessons in Composition, Vol. 1 by elysian7403, F392 Yinyang by Fluxxor392, vkhutemas’s speakeasy by caterpillar’s.kimono and Tokyo Phantom 2020 by kitasenjudesign

Color Shifts

Another theme recurring throughout the competition was color shifts – FontStructions with flimmering polychromatic edges, shifting laterally, or vertically as in the case of zandia eYe/FS:

From top to bottom: SbB Perspectives by Sketchbook B, Chromation by NWKS405, Stereochroma A by V. Sarela (Yautja) and zandia eYe/FS by elmoyenique

Plain Pixels

As always, there were many entrants who chose to dip just the one brick, the first and the plainest of all, into their pots of color. There are manifold bricks in our palettes, and often it seems that fonts with pure pixel aesthetics don’t get the attention or praise they deserve (spoiler alert: we do have a pixel font winner this time around). Our guest judge, Joe Stitzlein, particularily admired Discoshar (shown in the first two lines of text below) with it’s crazy explosion of pixel bling in the lower case and it’s extensive character set, including cyrillic.

Discoshar by Dmitriy Sychiov (Sychoff) (2 samples), Tinker’s Type by erictom333, Background Color by sophiatypelove and hs Vivela by Hensley Dodson (Hensilly)

Honorable Mentions

As noted above, every competition entry was honorable (I think!) and many, many are worthy of mention, so the following selection is only a subjective sample …

s’more by tortoiseshell, is an expertly-executed fun work, which certainly made the judges’ mouths water:

There weren’t many script entries – always a tricky genre – and Joe Stitzlein was especially impressed by Prepper’s Tecodanthe –with it’s quirky assembly of pyramidal studs:

Gob Pixi by faux_icing is a unique and serious experimental work created through a fascinating bespoke process (described in more detail on the FontStruction page) involving FontStruct, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. The judges talked about this one for a long time. Could easily have been a winner on another day.

Personally I love this last-minute entry. G1 BattleGraf: Yet another masterwork from the godfather of the ’struct – geneus1.  G1 BattleGraf is incredibly fun to type with – it immediately makes the humble keyboard-slapper feel like an artist.

Softstruct from Frodo7 was one of Joe Stitzlein’s clear favourites. It stood out for him straightaway as a strong and playful concept, ingeniously executed. It also came within a whisker of winning the popular vote.

The Winners

Outstructing the strongest of competition, not least from his other entries, the first of our winners is kassymkulov with Penzl KD: A clever, witty concept, perfectly extrapolated through the lower-case variants and the punctuation. Joe noted the engineering intelligence of the design: the smart and funny solutions found for the unique challenges of each glyph form.

Our first-time winner is a pixel font! – AJN Jellybean from AidenFont. Again Joe’s expert eyes were immediately drawn to the sweet charms of this gelatinous design. He admired AidenFont’s attention to detail, color-choices and his ability to understand and give depth to the overlapping, bulbous forms.

Finally, The FontStructors Favorite, chosen by popular vote, is Memphisette from V. Sarela (Yautja). There was actually a tie with Softstruct by Frodo7 and Playfully by The Dab Master, so we used the balanced rating as a tie-breaker. Memphisette is a brave typographical foray into the color palette and formal language of 1980s design. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone else attempt this on FontStruct before. A clever, thoughtful homage to a moment of postmodern weirdness:

That’s it! Prizewinners will be contacted in the coming days.

Thanks as always to our Patrons who continue to support FontStruct financially (you can too!), and to our main sponsors GlyphsApp and FontSelf.

Many thanks to our guest judge Joe Stitzlein who gave us a generous amount of his time and expertise for free.

Joe Stitzlein, and on the right, one version of his font Hamster, released by Fontwerk.

– Joe’s is a typeface designer and Executive Creative Director of Stitzlein Studio, a brand identity and digital design practice in the Bay Area. He’s created custom type for Meta in thousands of languages and designed iconic identities for Netflix, Dwell, and Lilly. Previously, Joe led global brand design at Google, partnered with Steve Jobs at Apple, and launched campaigns for Nike and the Obama White House. Learn more at https://stitzstudio.com and https://www.instagram.com/stitzstudio

Congratulations again to all who took part.
Until the next competition, Happy FontStructing!

*color will get its ‘u’ back after this post.