GRANSHAN Statement for our times

As the hub for global visual identity, GRANSHAN celebrates non-Latin fonts and typography, design, and communication. And in doing so, GRANSHAN supports communities, culture, and businesses to evolve in a balance between local, regional, and global. GRANSHAN is a project of international understanding: communication managed with high quality fonts and excellent typography enables communication and empowers identity. Our attitude is never exclusionary, but broad and inclusive.

At the same time, we are aware of the wide range of conflict situations and injustices of all kinds worldwide; as a globally active project, we are regularly confronted with them. We are mindful of the challenge and the pitfalls of judging things from the outside. Amongst the founders and supporters of the GRANSHAN Foundation there are many people with strong views in these areas. We respect these, and – as long as this respect and openness is mutual – we are happy to expose ourselves to this diversity of opinions and rise to the challenge of mutual understanding.

Across our range of activities, our red lines are clear: we cannot provide a platform for anyone who speaks out in favour of any form of war of aggression. We stand for a world order founded on international law and mutual understanding and cooperation.

Please follow this Link which brings you to the results page. There you will find an overview of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Prizes (and of course the Grand Prize) with the submitted posters. In the lower part you will find all Awards, including the Special Mentions and also the annotations of the jury, in case there were comments or restrictions concerning the submissions.

A nice picture gallery of the conference with its side events and also of the award sessions can be found on Flickr – big thanks to Michi Bundscherer, Michael Lang and Pavlo Kochan for their photos. If someone wants to share the pictures on social media, this is allowed by naming the photographer, for commercial purposes we ask for a prior request.

Chairpersons and Script Chairs

Veronika Burian

Co-Chair TypeDesign competition

Veronika Burian is a type designer and the co-founder of the independent type foundry TypeTogether with José Scaglione, publishing award-winning typefaces and collaborating on tailored typefaces for a variety of clients. Furthermore, TypeTogether supports young people with a Typeface Publishing Program – the »Gerard Unger Scholarship«.

Shani Avni

Script Chair

Shani Avni is the Ismar David Assistant Curator in RIT Cary Graphic Arts Collection. She designs, researches, teaches, consults, writes and lectures on Hebrew type design and typography.

Kalapi Gajjar-Bordawekar

Script Chair

Kalapi Gajjar-Bordawekar is a typeface designer and font engineer. He's a creative director and co-founder of Universal Thirst, a typeface design studio specialising in writing systems of the Indian sub-continent.

Haytham Nawar

Script Chair

Haytham Nawar is an artist, designer, and researcher who currently lives and works in Cairo. He is Assistant Professor and Director of the Graphic Design program, Department of the Arts at the American University in Cairo. At the Granshan Competition, he is specialist in Arabic typefonts.

Angela Poghosova

Script Chair

Angela Poghosova is a type designer, an interpreter and a translator who lives and works in Yerevan, Armenia.

Alexei Vanyashin

Script Chair

Alexei Vanyashin is a Russian typeface designer, and educator. He researches and writes on the history of Cyrillic. Since 2014, he is a member of the GRANSHAN jury.

Anuthin Wongsunkakon

Script Chair

Anuthin Wongsunkakon is a Thai typedesigner and one of the founding partners of Cadson Demak, a Thai communication design firm. He is a jury member of GRANSHAN Competition since 2014.

Liu Zhao

Script Chair

Liu Zhao is a type, visual communication designer and Associate Professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, China. She is a jury member of GRANSHAN Competition since 2016.

General Information

GRANSHAN celebrates the diversity and richness of typographic scripts that underpin global communication, empower communities, and enable identity. The GRANSHAN Competition covers a growing range of scripts for communities on a global scale – from the most widely used, to scripts used by small communities or those under threat.

All type designers, type foundries, and clients with custom typefaces from all parts of the world are invited to take part.

International type competitions – of which there are few – usually focus on the Latin script. The GRANSHAN type competition on the other hand explicitly seeks to recognise the most notable typefaces for individual scripts other than Latin as well as multiscript families.

The number of multilingual typeface developments has grown continuously in recent years – and there are more and more non-Latin Typefaces designed either in conjunction with new Latin typefaces or as script extensions of existing Latin typefaces. Therefore, GRANSHAN now offers submissions in nine SCRIPT GROUPS in six CATEGORIES.

SCRIPT GROUPS

In this year's competition entries in the following nine SCRIPT GROUPS are welcome:
· Arabic (Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, Urdu)
· Armenian
· Chinese (traditional or simplified)
· Cyrillic (Bulgarian, Mongolian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian, etc.)
· Greek
· Hebrew
· South Asian Scripts (Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Telugu, Tamil, Gujarati, Malayalam, Sinhala, etc.)
· Korean
· Thai

AWARDS

In each of the nine SCRIPT GROUPS (Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, etc.), for each of the CATEGORIES A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2 a first, second and third prize can be awarded as well as special mentions.
With the special mentions, the jury will honor projects where single aspects or a very advanced stage of development have convinced the jury, while their overall impression remains lower in quality than the award-winning projects of this or previous years.

One GRANSHAN GRAND PRIZE of € 1,000 will be awarded by the jury at the end of the judging process to the best of the best.

PRESENTATION & CEREMONY

The winners will be announced on the www.granshan.com website and will receive a GRANSHAN certificate. Posters of the winning entries will be exhibited at least at the Munich Design Week in May 2022. During the same event, a two day international conference is planned including an award ceremony of the winners of the GRANSHAN Type Design Competition 2021/22 in presence of Script Chairs, top winners and both Chairpersons.

Organizers of the GRANSHAN competition reserve the right to display submitted typefaces at the exhibitions, in press, social media and any other relevant publications. Therefore, we kindly ask for a short 20-word-bio and a portrait photo of the type designer(s) in printable resolution in A6.

No font source files will be made publicly available!

TIMETABLE

Submissions
Can be made using the submission tool on https://granshan.submit.to from 1 October 2021 to 28 February 2022

Start of jury work
7 March 2022

Announcement of winners
During the Munich Designweek between 14 to 22 May 2022

Jury & Evaluation

The 12th GRANSHAN Competition Jury once again consists of numerous internationally acclaimed experts: for each SCRIPT GROUP a minimum of three dedicated specialists will provide reviews of the submission. Each SCRIPT GROUP is moderated by a so-called Script Chair, who is also casting a vote and whose vote acts as a tie-breaker.

To ensure continuity in the evaluation over the years, the Script Chairs are designated for several years. The Script Specialists are chosen collectively by the Script Chairs together with the Chairpersons.

The Chairpersons of the GRANSHAN competition, Veronika Burian and Edik Ghabuzyan, are responsible for the appointment of the Script Chairs and for moderating the competition as non-voting Chairpersons. This year, the competition's long-time co-chairman, GRANSHAN Foundation President Boris Kochan, will guide and support this process.

Competition Script Chairs

· Arabic | Haytham Nawar

· Armenian | Angela Poghosova

· Chinese | Liu Zhao

· Cyrillic | Alexei Vanyashin

· Greek | Gerry Leonidas

· Hebrew | Shani Avni

· South Asian Scripts | Kalapi Gajjar-Bordawekar

· Korean | Chang Sik Kim

· Thai | Anuthin Wongsunkakon

List of Competition Script Experts 2021/2022

For each SCRIPT GROUP, a minimum of three renowned specialists have again agreed to support the GRANSHAN competition with their outstanding expertise on a voluntary basis. The members of the jury who have been appointed to date are documented below – a big thank you to the very committed colleagues!

Arabic

Armenian

Khajag Apelian | Davit Ghazaryan | Hrachuhi Grigoryan | Ruben Malayan | Angela Poghosova (Script Chair)

Chinese

Cyrillic Scripts

Greek

Kostas Bartsokas | Eleni Beveratou | Gerry Leonidas (Script Chair) | Panos Vassiliou | Irene Vlachou

Hebrew

Shani Avni (Script Chair) | Nitzan Chelouche | Liron Lavi Turkenich | Adi Stern | Ada Wardi

South Asian Scripts

Korean

Chang Sik Kim (Script Chair) | Chorong Kim | Yanghee Ryu

Thai

Competition Chairpersons

Veronika Burian | Edik Ghabuzyan

Evaluation procedure

All entries shall be anonymized and evaluated in a three-level procedure:

First level: longlist

All entries shall be gathered in a longlist for each SCRIPT GROUP in each of the six CATEGORIES A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2. The Script experts and the Script Chair shall evaluate every entry with an online scoring system. In addition to the scoring system, the jury members may add separate review comments to accompany their evaluation in a designated box. The results of the voting are visible to other experts. In this first step, the evaluation of the Script Chairs and of the Script Experts shall be equally weighted. Outcome: entries with a minimum score shall make it to the second level, the shortlist.

Second level: shortlist

In this step, the Script Experts together with the Script Chairs of each SCRIPT GROUP will discuss in an online video conference which submissions are worthy of recognition. After the discussion each Script Expert and the Script Chair will make their own recommendation for 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize, and special mentions, with an online scoring system. All the entries that reach this second level shall be published on the GRANSHAN website. Outcome: potential prize winners shall move on to the third level.

Third level: prize winners

The price winners and the special mentions shall be determined in an online video conference of all Script Chairs together with both Chairpersons. The final jury will again evaluate the recommended prize winners of level two – with the possibility to downgrade and to determine the ranking from 1st to 3rd prize and special mentions in each SCRIPT GROUP.

At the very end, the Script Chairs together with the Chairpersons will decide the GRANSHAN GRAND PRIZE winner by vote.

COMPETITION ENTRY

Find here all information about the Competition

GRANSHAN Competition 2021-2022 information.pdf

Submission

REGULATIONS

Fees

Your registration in the submission tool as well as the creation of drafts are free of charge. Submissions are subject to a fee from the time the submission is completed. After that, submissions cannot be cancelled or refunded.

This year the fee policy changed to better reflect differences in global living standards and possibilities, the difference between students, freelancers and small, medium and bigger type design foundries.

There are three basic triers:

Low income countries (on the basis of self-assessment),students, and freelancers
Small and medium size companies with less than 20 employees or collaborators
Bigger companies with 20 employees or collaborators and more

The fees outlined in the table are set as a minimum. Any additional higher payment on a voluntary basis would be very welcomed.

Fees include VAT. Payment via wire transfer or Paypal.

	A1/A2	B1/B2	C1/C2
Low income countries, students, freelancers	25,00 € $ 29.00	50,00 € $ 59.00	75,00 € $ 87.00
Small & medium companies (<20 employees/ collaborators)	50,00 € $ 59.00	75,00 € $ 87.00	100,00 € $ 117.00
Bigger companies (=/> 20 employees/ collaborators)	100,00 € $ 117.00	125,00 € $ 146.00	150,00 € $ 175.00

Fees are payable via bank wire to:
GRANSHAN Foundation e.V.
IBAN DE23 7015 0000 1004 7672 71
BIC: SSKMDEMM

Or via Paypal to: granshan@granshan.com    

Please enter your »submission title« that is assigned by the system  in the online submission form as a reference. You will receive a confirmation of payment by email within 14 days of the transfer.   
Please note that your submission will be admitted to the jury  only after successful payment.

Thank you for being part of the GRANSHAN project!

RULES

ELIGIBILITY

Type designers from all over the world are invited to take part in the competition. All typefaces designed or digitized in or after 2018 complying with the requirements of the competition are eligible for submission.

Typefaces may be submitted by anyone involved in their design, production, or marketing (please define your position). All submitted typefaces shall comply with and use the Unicode encoding system. Entries can be single typefaces or type families, revivals or new developments. Custom fonts are welcome, as well as student projects.

In the submission form you can explain the concept behind the typeface and give details about any special characteristics you want to be taken into account when evaluating the typeface. Provide any information you think is relevant regarding historical or other models, and if the typeface is intended to function alongside other typefaces. This description will not be published – its sole purpose is to provide the jury with as much background information as possible for the evaluation.

Please anonymise your text and do not mention the name of the submitted typeface, the designer or the type foundry.

You can of course submit multiple entries to this contest. Please use a separate form in the online application for each entry and submit separate PDFs. Also please note that each submission must be paid separately.

Typefaces by the Chairpersons, the members of the organizing committee and Script Chairs are not eligible for submission. Script Experts are allowed to submit their own projects, but will be excluded from evaluating and voting for their own entry. Script Chairs and Script Experts have the opportunity to opt out due to bias for any of the submissions.

SUBMISSIONS

Submissions are accepted exclusively via the online submission tool available at https://granshan.submit.to. Participants can register for free and create an unlimited number of drafts. The submissions won’t be charged unless you press the Submit button. For further assessment, only those submissions will be considered that comply with the conditions of participation and that were submitted between
1 October 2021 and 28 February 22.
Drafts are not considered completed submissions.

By filling in and sending the application form, you confirm that you have the right to submit the typeface to the GRANSHAN competition 2021/22 and that you indemnify GRANSHAN Foundation e.V. from all claims made by third parties. The organizers are not responsible for the information given in the application form.