Type Directors Club unveils first Type-High winners at global TDC72 typography awards

BROOKLYN: The Type Directors Club (TDC) has announced the inaugural winners of its newly introduced Type-High Awards as part of the global TDC72 competition, recognising excellence in typography, lettering and communication design.

The winners were revealed during a special awards ceremony and exhibition held at The Lighthouse in Brooklyn, marking the first year the organisation has presented physical Gold, Silver and Bronze Type-High trophies alongside its long-standing Certificates of Merit.

Named and designed by Type Directors Club chairman emeritus Graham Clifford, the new awards aim to recognise the highest achievements in typography and design while expanding the competition’s honours.

This year, the jury awarded 13 Gold, 26 Silver, 28 Bronze and 93 Certificates of Merit across the competition.

Among the top honours, Best of Discipline awards went to SMLXL New York and Mallandrich Barcelona for Spatial Festival 2025 in Communication Design, Neighbour Co. Hong Kong for Tattour 2025 Identity in Lettering, and Adobe Tokyo’s Momochidori Variable Font, created by Ryoko Nishizuka and Frank Grießhammer, in Type Design.

The inaugural Gold winners also included projects spanning branding, editorial design, motion graphics, environmental design and experimental typography.

Highlights included 12 Matcha by Base Design New York, Stanford d.school Yearbook ’24 by Daniel Frumhoff Design, Who Is The Sky? album artwork for David Byrne, Caption with Intention by Omnicom Chicago, Herby, a holographic typeface by Underware, and two Gold-winning entries for OpenAI DevDay 2025, created by Studio Dumbar/DEPT Rotterdam in collaboration with OpenAI Creative Studio in San Francisco.

Studio Dumbar/DEPT emerged as one of the competition’s most successful entrants, securing two Gold, two Silver and one Certificate of Merit. SMLXL New York followed with one Gold, two Silver, one Bronze and one Certificate of Merit.

The competition attracted winners from 40 countries and regions, reflecting the increasingly global nature of typography and communication design. The United States led the tally with 93 winning entries, followed by Mainland China with 23. The Netherlands and Spain each secured nine awards, while the United Kingdom recorded seven.

Winning work will appear in the forthcoming edition of The World’s Best Typography, the annual publication of the Type Directors Club, scheduled for release in September. The projects will also feature in a travelling exhibition that will visit museums, schools and design institutions around the world.

In addition, TDC72 winners will earn points in The One Club for Creativity’s Global Creative Rankings, alongside winners from competitions including The One Show, ADC Annual Awards, Art Directors Club of Europe Awards and the ONE Asia Creative Awards.

The TDC72 competition was judged by an international panel led by Uncommon Creative Studio global chief design officer Lisa Smith for Communication Design, illustrator and designer Mary Kate McDevitt for Lettering, and type designer Aleksandra Samuļenkova for Type Design.

With the introduction of the Type-High Awards, the Type Directors Club is giving typography’s highest achievers a more visible place on the global creative stage, celebrating work that pushes the boundaries of design, storytelling and visual communication.