MAM
Type Directors Club opens call for entries for global TDC70 Competition
Mumbai: The Type Directors Club, the world’s leading typography organization, has opened the call for entries for its prestigious TDC70 competition.
As changed last year, the program is a single competition under the TDC70 umbrella consisting of three disciplines: Communication Design, Lettering, and Type Design.
The Communication Design discipline encompasses any design or creation that uses type, lettering, or written language as a significant element, and is an expansion of what was previously the TDC Communications Design discipline. Typography includes graphic design, UI/UX, environmental design or architecture with typographic elements, film, animation and motion design, social media campaigns, new media, and anything else where typography is used.
The dedicated discipline for Lettering is for work where the letters were created or modified. This includes contemporary lettering, traditional calligraphy, sign painting, wordmarks and custom logos, digital or analogue distortions, eccentric display typefaces, and more. This new discipline, now in its second year, has its own dedicated jury, made up of some of the world’s leading lettering practitioners and experts.
Type Design is for entries showcasing the design of typefaces. It also allows for entries of any thematically applicable code or software, such as software for creating or generating type.
To be eligible, work must have been produced or published in the 2023 calendar year. Early bird deadline for entry is 27 October, with entry fees increasing for the regular deadline of 8 December, and final deadline on 26 January 2024.
Juries will be announced shortly. Across the three juries, TDC70 will have native experts for writing systems spanning Arabic, Cyrillic, Indic, CJK, Thai, and select African scripts. While the competition always accepted international and multilingual entries, the addition of more judges in recent years was a reflection of TDC’s commitment to have a greater number of the most appropriate experts judging designs for which they have a deep knowledge.
The TDC competition regularly receives entries from more than 60 countries. To make TDC70 as accessible as possible on a global level, the organization is offering significant regional discounts on entry fees.
Approximately half of the world’s countries qualify for a 60 percent discount, and another quarter of them receive a 20 per cent discount, with only the most economically prosperous countries and regions paying the full entry fee. Additional discounts are also available to TDC members and students.
Winners of TDC70 receive a Certificate of Typographic Excellence and digital seal certifying their work is among the world’s best of the year. Winning work will also be featured in the highly respected TDC Annual, The World’s Best Typography, and showcased in eight exhibitions that travel to museums, schools and design organizations around the world.
TDC70 winners are also part of The One Club’s prestigious Global Creative Rankings, earning points alongside winners in The One Show and ADC Annual Awards to chart the world’s leading independent creatives, ad agencies, production companies, and brands.
This year’s TDC70 competition committee is chaired by Eric Q. Liu, typographer, editor, podcaster and writer with The Type in Tokyo, with support from TDC Advisory Board members John Kudos, managing partner, KUDOS Design Collaboratory and KASA Collective, New York, and Trisha Tan, design director, Brooklyn, NY.
Branding for this year’s competition was created by Wolff Olins, with fonts generously donated by Neubau, based in Berlin.
“Each year, the TDC has epitomized the essence of the current era,” said Wolff Olins global principal Thomas Wilder. “This year, we wanted to challenge the all-too-common approach of looking to the future or to the past, and instead bring urgency and importance to the present moment. We set out with the idea ‘Made For Now’ to design with the power of ephemerality in an ever-changing world.”
“TDC’s annual competition strives to always remain relevant to the greater typographic community in all regions and cultures, and we’re excited to accept and celebrate entries in more disciplines and styles than ever before,” said Type Directors Club executive director Carol Wahler.
MAM
VML India lands two finalist spots at Cairns Hatchlings 2026
The Mumbai agency is back in Australia with two teams, a UN brief and 24 hours to impress
MUMBAI: VML India is heading to Australia again. The Mumbai-based creative agency has secured two finalist spots at the Cairns Hatchlings 2026 competition, one in the Audio category and one in Design, making it the only Indian agency to have reached the finals in both editions of the contest since its launch in 2025.
Four people will make the trip. Senior copywriter Shilpi Dey and senior art director Raj Thakkar will compete in Audio. Art directors Shabbir and Shruti Negi will go head-to-head with the world’s best in Design. The finals take place at the Cairns Convention Centre from 13th May, culminating in an awards ceremony on 15th May.
The work that got them there is worth examining. For the Audio category, Dey and Thakkar tackled a brief for LIVE LIKE MMAD with a campaign called Inner Voice, Interrupted. Using spatial audio techniques, the campaign recreates the overwhelming self-doubt that descends after a long workday, physically panning negative thoughts left and right before cutting the noise entirely to reveal a confident inner voice. Strategically targeted at commuters via Spotify during evening rush hours, the campaign reframes the hours after work as an opportunity for personal growth and charitable action.
For the Design category, Shabbir and Negi worked on a brief for Canteen’s Bandanna Day, a campaign highlighting how cancer pushes teenagers out of their own defining moments. Using a pixelated design language to create stark contrast between a blurred world of isolation and a focused world of connection, the campaign, titled The Flipside of Cancer, shows teenagers fading into the background of birthdays, skateparks and school proms. As a Canteen bandanna appears, the blur flips and the teenager snaps back into sharp focus.
Kalpesh Patankar, group chief creative officer of VML India, made no attempt to disguise his satisfaction. “We are immensely proud to see our teams consistently excel on the Cairns Hatchlings platform since its inception,” he said. “They have masterfully tackled challenging briefs across diverse categories, demonstrating both layered storytelling and a unique creative approach. This exceptional teamwork is truly inspiring.”
Dey and Thakkar, returning to the finals after last year’s run, were candid about the demands of the audio medium. “It’s one of the most demanding mediums, where we only have a few seconds to capture a listener’s world with sound alone, so absolute clarity is essential,” they said. “The true measure of creative work is its ability to create positive change, and our audio submission was made to help those who need it most while encouraging people to silence the inner voices that hold them back.”
Shabbir and Negi, competing in Design for the first time, described the experience as “a completely different beast.” “We see it as an opportunity to showcase our expertise, raise the bar, and challenge ourselves in new ways, while also learning from creative minds from across the globe,” they said.
In Australia, the four finalists will face a live 24-hour brief from the United Nations before presenting in a live pitch session. Twenty-four hours, one brief, one shot. VML India has been here before. It knows exactly what is at stake.
