TDC Gives Special Recognition to Students from Germany, Spain, and New York
Each year, as part of the Type Directors Club Communications Design competition, the judges choose three student works to receive special recognition.
At our July 18 awards ceremony in New York, we were honored to present awards to the following international group of students, whose work is included in the exhibition of the 64th Annual Type Directors Club Communications Design competition, The World’s Best Typography.
- Yuliana Gorkorov, studying at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany
- İdil Gücüyener and Anna Kabanina, studying at ELISAVA Barcelona School of Design and Engineering
- Anna Feng, studying at Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York City
We invite you read about this award-winning work inspired by international alphabets, hip-hop, Shakespeare, and labor activists. Congratulations to the students, professors, and the design schools, who will surely keep up the good work!
Student Work – Best in Show: Global Alphabet by Yuliana Gorkorov
- Designer: Yuliana Gorkorov, Essen, Germany
- Website: mutualphabets.com
- Professors for book design: Ralf de Jong and Christin Heinze
- Professors for font design: Ralf de Jong, Natascha Dell, and Christin Heinze
- School: Folkwang University of the Arts
- Principal Type: Abjad Lino, Akrofont, ApocalypsA, Arno Pro, BABEL2014, and LATAR
Yuliana Gorkorov’s Global Alphabet.
Designer’s statement: “In our globalized, digitized world, people from different cultures communicate with one another daily. We speak different languages and many words can be understood by all of us, but such words are unrecognizable when written in foreign alphabets. The Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabets look unrelated, despite their shared historical origin.
For five years, I looked for the best way to reunite them in a new alphabet that would be readable to people from different cultures. The results are five fonts presented in Global Alphabet. This book shows how such fonts can be integrated in our daily life.
To extend the scope of the book and to make it interactive, I used foldout pages and augmented reality.”
Pages from Yuliana Gorkorov’s Global Alphabet.
Student Work – Second Place: To Live and Die in Venice by İdil Gücüyener and Anna Kabanina
- Designers: İdil Gücüyener and Anna Kabanina, Barcelona, Spain
- Instructor: Pol Pérez
- Typography tutor: Laura Meseguer
- School: ELISAVA Barcelona School of Design and Engineering
- Principal Type: Akzidenz-Grotesk Extended, Akzidenz-Grotesk Medium Extended, Pitch Regular, William Regular, and William Regular Italic
İdil Gücüyener and Anna Kabanina’s To Live and Die in Venice.
Designers’ statement: “In a freestyle rap battle, quick thinking and the ability to respond quickly are key. Competitors dis one another with clever lyrics amid a complex game of words. Such battles are similar to the medieval tradition of “flyting”—a poetic exchange of insults that appears in several works of Shakespeare.
To Live and Die in Venice is a play that experiments with similarities and differences between hip-hop and Shakespeare by making these two worlds collide through the use of typography and imagery. The story is an interpretation of the Shakespearean classic Othello set in hip-hop’s golden age—the 1990s.”
Spread from İdil Gücüyener and Anna Kabanina’s To Live and Die in Venice.
Student Work – Third Place: Rank & File by Anna Feng
- Designer: Anna Feng, Brooklyn, New York
- Website: anna-feng.com
- Twitter: @_annafeng
- Instructor: Andrew LeClair
- School: Parsons School of Design, The New School
- Principal Type: Platform and Portrait
Cover of Anna Feng’s Rank & File.
Designer’s statement: “Rank & File commits to centering radical voices of the labor movement and highlighting workers’ personal experiences in the workplace. As a platform for union members of every level, it creates a network of workers, union leaders, and political activists that allows them to engage in discussion through various perspectives.
Rank & File also provides direct interaction between the publication and its readers as a means to promote nonviolent direct action. For example, posters and petitions are included in the newspaper to help workers organize and spread their messages.”
Spread in Anna Feng’s Rank & File.
The 265 Communication Design competition winners, as well as the winners of the typeface design competition, are on display at The Cooper Union’s Gallery 41 until August 10th.
This award-winning student work will travel to many cities and design conferences around the world, and will be published in the upcoming TDC annual, The World’s Best Type and Typography.
We would like to thank our competition and exhibition sponsors — Monotype, The Cooper Union, Fordham University, and A2A Studio Solutions.
Yuliana Gorkorov, a student at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, Germany, holds her first-place ribbon for Global Alphabet, which was also designated a Judges’ Choice in the TDC64 competition, at TDC awards night at The Cooper Union in New York City.
İdil Gücüyener and Anna Kabanina from Barcelona’s ELISAVA Barcelona School of Design and Engineering enjoy their second-place student award for To Live and Die in Venice, which was also designated a Judges’ Choice. Photo: Mélanie Duault.
Anna Feng of Parsons School of Design, who won the third-place student award for her Rank & File newspaper design. Photo: Mélanie Duault.
