Brick by Brick, the FontStruct Blog

The FontStruct Blog

Serif Competition Results

Competitions, News | | December 4th, 2017

Oh FontStructors,

Will you ever disappoint? This time you were faced with what seemed, at first glance, a relatively staid and technical theme: “serif”. Nevertheless you rose to the challenge, with your inimitable imagination and energy – endlessly riffing, playing and transmogrifying to produce a magnificently rich and diverse array of 58 entries – a record haul for a FontStruct competition. Many thanks and congratulations to everyone who entered.

Judging was more difficult than ever, but, thanks to the excellent input of our guest judge beate, we finally reached consensus.

First up, and in no particular order, the four winning entrants:

1. G1 Radia by geneus1 (in red)

G1 Radia was a unanimous choice of the judges. With it’s high-contrast strokes, ball-terminals and discreet little serifs this FontStruction genuinely radiates a curvesome beauty, although on closer inspection one also sees intriguing traces of its cruder, modular roots.

All four winners actually made multiple high-quality entries, some of which we couldn’t resist including in the samples, so below G1 Radia you can also marvel at the monumental G1 Valora – one of the serifiest serifs this side of the Pecos.

2. Hoek by four (shown in red)

Hoek was elected by the FontStruct community as the “people’s favorite” . It obviously stems from a clear and precise concept for a bevelled slab, thoughtfully executed in every perfect detail.
In fact, the judges were even more excited by the highly-inventive “elza” (the second design featured above) in which wiry strokes terminate in a questioning hook-shape rather than a traditional serif or terminal. Planetarium, also shown above, was another strong and popular slab entry.

3. Cembrel B by V. Sarela AKA yautja

The judges were enchanted by Cembrel B: a subtle, attractive, and eminently-usable, high-contrast serif, part of a developing new family. Nouveaumbre was another really excellent entry from yautja.

And last but not least …

4. AT Bals by architaraz

A classifier’s nightmare: a slab serif concealed inside a sans! – what an innovative interpretation of the theme. Beyond the high concept, architaraz also succeeds in delivering a coherent and attractive typeface. Beneath AT Bals you can see the elegant inline ”AT Migdalia” with it’s hairline serifs.

Many, many congratulations to our four prizewinners.

Some Honorable Mentions:

tm Almost by thalamic

– A classic serif with an unusual calligraphic twist, created on a pin-board matrix.

zlabby eYe/FS by elmoyenique

– A convivial, super-chunky slab-serif, given added character by the idiosyncratic snips in certain letter-tops.

atomic by time.peace

– Actually I’m not sure whether this is (at least in any sense known to me) a serif, but a strong, clear design nevertheless.

cyclops by funk_king

– One of three strong entries from the master of the dotted font. Some really charming glyphs in this one.

fs luxor by ETHproductions

– Ultra-high-contrast strokes and serifs in a stencil-flavoured entry.

tyvojtoAD2820 by jirinvk

– Calculated, cutout crudity. Shamelessly modular and yet also wonderfully imperfect.

Kuliboni Punk by Dmitriy Sychiov (Sychoff)

This brutal disfiguration of an existing design by Sychoff came very close to a prize. Although tagged as punk, there’s also something quite primitive and ancient going on here. I can see these glyphs scratched into the base of an amphora, or perhaps arranged in the border of a mosaic. Compare the Jekyll to this Hyde.

Congratulations again to all winners, who will be contacted about their prizes in the next few days; thanks to our judges; and, most of all, thanks to everyone who took part. I look forward to our next competition.

Happy FontStructing!

Rob

 


FontStruct would like to thank our sponsor: Creative Fabrica – your number #1 source for premium design elements.

 


9 Comments

  1. Aeolien

    Congratulations on getting a new t-shirt ;) to geneus, four, Yautia and Architaraz: your summer should be typogra(ph)funtastic. And to all who got mentioned by name. And certainly to all who didn’t get a mention this time:  let’s keep going with creating fonts to enchant the judges and amaze or dazzle members in FS competitions, our time will come :)

    Looking at all the entries I was surprised by some, taken into a cloud of wonder by others and a few took me straight into creative design mode. Such variety — who would have thought it possible that fonts with serifs could be so widely different! Thanks to Meek and the team (great, Beate was there too!!! involving our talented members is such a brilliant idea) and to FS.

    Aeolien — December 12, 2017 #

  2. dpla

    I enjoyed both these interesting/beautiful entries and the judges’ informative/professional comments.

    dpla — December 12, 2017 #

  3. naveenchandru

    Congratz to all the winners and all the participants!

    There were highly impressive creations!

    naveenchandru — December 12, 2017 #

  4. ETHproductions

    A huge congratulations to everyone who entered, especially genius, four, archi, and Yautja! I’m sure it was incredibly hard to pick just 4 winners; there were so many amazing FontStructions entered in this competition. It was great to see a bunch of newer users participating, as well as some of the older FS’ers who don’t post new creations very often (sorry I kind of fall into that group…)

    A great competition overall, and I can’t wait for the next one :-)

    ETHproductions — December 12, 2017 #

  5. Yautja

    Wow, never won before! Cheers to everyone!

    Yautja — December 12, 2017 #

  6. cablecomputer

    Congrats to all the worthy winners: geneus1, four, Yautja, and architaraz! Well, although sadly I wasn’t much involved into the competition back then, it’s already pleasing to see the wide varieties of all the submissions. Good job everyone, now looking for the next competition!

    cablecomputer — December 13, 2017 #

  7. architaraz

    Thank you! Good to know that this comp brought record number of entries. 

    I actually almost missed this competition, saw the ad only two weeks later, so may I suggest that next time these kind of news were also sent by e-mail?

    Congrats to everybody who participated! It’s really a matter of free time and those who found time to partcipate should think of themselves as a winner.

    Thank you Meek, staff, judges and sponsors for making this happen.

    architaraz — December 14, 2017 #

  8. four

    So many excelent entries! Thanks meek, for organising another great competition! Thanks beate for being a judge on this!

    four — December 20, 2017 #

  9. geneus1

    Congratulations to all who entered. Sorry for the long delay in response. I’m not experiencing time the way I used to. I really have to spend more time in this reality.

    Thank you Meek, and the staff, and the judges for once again allowing me to exercise my creative font building muscles. These days, I usually don’t attempt to “win” a competition, but to push the boundaries of the concept of the competition. The motivational drive for me on the SerifComp shifted somewhat with the ponderence of the question: “What if I made a font that beate would like?” And thus began a process of sculpting down a larger fontstruction with Radia and adding smoothness to the serifity of the design in a beate-like fashion, which inadvertently made the final production much more aesthetically pleasing than originally intended. So thanks to beate for the inspiration. :-)

    Again, kudos to all and the record number of entries in a contest that beseeches a preference of designs exhibiting functionality and legibility over display type characteristicalities. Bravo!

    geneus1 — December 21, 2017 #