This is an archive of previous calls.
For the current TDC Competitions in Typography and in Type Design, see the Typography Competitions page.

TDC53
The 53rd Annual Type Directors Club Exhibition
Call for Entries

Chairman’s Statement

WE ALL KNOW that type directors and designers react to the ubiquitous Call For Entries in one of two ways. Either they groan with apprehension, or they grin with anticipation. Either way, it’s a prelude to their transformation into the Raiders of the Lost Archives and that maddening search through the flat files for those elusive proofs. Be you groaner or grinner, I urge you to persevere, uncover and send us your gems, because it’s not just ‘that time of year again’.

This year, the Type Directors Club turns 60. Someone, somewhere, will bake us a nice cake, for sure, but what the TDC wants more than anything is the icing: your best work. We’re celebrating six decades of recognising and praising typographic excellence at a time when elevating the standard of such communication has never been more important.

At the risk of adding one acronym too many to this page, the age of TMI (Too Much Information) makes our craft increasingly valuable—and vital.

That’s one thing the TDC53 panel of judges can agree on. They’re an impressive bunch who hail from all over the globe, boasting vastly different design disciplines. Accordingly, their perspectives may differ but what they do share is an intense passion for typography and design. But only the really good stuff.

The question is: have you got any? There are more incentives to enter than mere peer recognition. All accepted work is not only published in our annual, Typography 29, but also travels the world as part of our exhibition.

After that, it’s advisable to clear your schedule. Get Call Waiting, since the phone’ll be ringing off the hook. Expect unprompted salary increases, clients weeping openly as they grovel for your services, seething envy from your contemporaries, gorgeous strangers propositioning you in public, sudden gifts of vintage cars, property in the Seychelles, that sort of thing.

Well, at the very least you can jack up the day rate or take a sabbatical, write a book, live with the wolves, whatever.

But the point is: show yourself. Send us your work. Be bold (sorry!), be confident, be proud of what you do. This year, as you can see, we’ve made it even E-Zier to enter the annual TDC competition. (Actually Number Seventeen have made it even E-Zier to enter.)

On behalf of the judges, I look forward to seeing what you’re made of, and I thank you for supporting the Club.

Best of luck!

Graham Clifford
Chairman, TDC53

About the TDC Competitions

The Type Directors Club is an international organization founded in 1946 whose members include design professionals, typographic designers, and typophiles.

This year will be TDC’s fifty-third open Call for Entries in its international competition which recognizes excellence in the use of typography, calligraphy, handlettering and other letterforms. All entries will be judged by a panel of distinguished designers in January 2007. Winning works will be exhibited in six traveling shows and published in Typography 28, the hardbound, all-color competition annual designed by Number Seventeen. The annual is published by Collins Design, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, and sold worldwide.