Brick by Brick, the FontStruct Blog

The FontStruct Blog

Color Competition Results

Competition Results, News | | June 17th, 2025

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.

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:

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.

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

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.


19 Comments

  1. BWM

    There were a lot of amazing and cool entries this competition. Too bad my 3D entry wasn’t mentioned in the post.

    P.S. If anyone comes across Joe Stitzlein, can you tell him that his Hamster font looks amazing?

    BWM — June 17, 2025 #

  2. MetrikEnzyme

    Glad to be in the Comp!

    MetrikEnzyme — June 17, 2025 #

  3. Petruuccio

    Congratulations to winners.

    Petruuccio — June 17, 2025 #

  4. faux_icing

    Congratulations to all the winners! Glad my work made a good conversation piece with you guys, ahaha. 🤭

    Thanks as well Meek for letting all of us have a go at colour fonts as well! It made me realise its bigger use potential after seeing others ideate and finesse with them in this competition. Good job to everyone who worked hard on those beautiful fonts! 👍 💕

    faux_icing — June 17, 2025 #

  5. tortoiseshell

    Congratulations to the well-deserved victors! 

    And the honorable mention was a sweet (pun intended) surprise :)

    tortoiseshell — June 17, 2025 #

  6. vishvesh

    May the Colors will reflect rainbow upon all the winners. 
    love the spirit of fontstuct cult.

    vishvesh — June 17, 2025 #

  7. digitalio-2

    i actually thought that aiden would win and it was [SPOILER ALERT]

    digitalio-2 — June 17, 2025 #

  8. Yautja

    I’m honored, thank you! Congratulations to the other winners!

    Yautja — June 17, 2025 #

  9. Congrats to the winners and mentions! You’re great, pals!

    – elmoyenique — June 17, 2025 #

  10. Great job everyone! I admire all of the creativity of your work and look forward to seeing you all become flourishing typeface designers.
    —Joe

    Joe Stitzlein — June 17, 2025 #

  11. four

    Congratulations, everyone!

    four — June 17, 2025 #

  12. NekokunChannel

    I love how this happened, and congratulations to everyone who wins into their competition! :-D

    NekokunChannel — June 17, 2025 #

  13. Sketchbook B

    So many great designs. Congrats to the winners.

    Sketchbook B — June 17, 2025 #

  14. kassymkulov

    Well, that’s a surprise :) Thanks! Glad you liked it. Now we have fresh 100 color fonts added to Fontstruct catalog, how amazing. Congrats to all participants, aforementioned and winners. 

    kassymkulov — June 17, 2025 #

  15. Sed4tives

    Congratz to all participants, this competition sparked some delight designs. My apologies for not tuning in that often lately. This had me missing out on this awesome opportunity to do some color font try outs..

    Cheers to all

    Sed4tives — June 18, 2025 #

  16. erictom333

    Well done to everyone, and I’m honored to have one of my entrants showcased here. I would have liked more feedback on why these fonts were chosen, though.

    erictom333 — June 18, 2025 #

  17. Fluxxor392

    HOLY HELL MY FONT APPEARED IN ONE OF THE SAMPLES!!! :D

    Fluxxor392 — June 18, 2025 #

  18. thalamic

    Congratulations to all the winners.

    Congratulations to all the participants as well because the best part of entering a competition is the creation process.

    Well done, everyone.

    thalamic — June 18, 2025 #

  19. BWM

    @Joe Stitzlein Your Hamster font looks pretty amazing, especially the color variations!

    BWM — June 19, 2025 #