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Intro:

TDC in facts, dates and figures

The club was started as an unofficial gathering in 1943, by a group of “Mad” men from advertising agencies who began sharing typographic war stories over lunch.

Founding member Milton Zudeck described the club’s goals: “We simply want to make more and more advertising people aware of the importance of the agency typographer. We want them to realize that the selection of type for an advertisement demands a sixth sense that goes beyond the basic knowledge of typefaces.”

1946

The “Type Directors Club” organization was formed by several leading NY art directors, including Aaron Burns, Louis Dorfsman and Milton Zudeck.

We’re a nonprofit with no ulterior motive, and that lack of conflicting interests creates a rare chance to advocate for a collective whole, for an industry.

That advocacy can exist in many forms—scholarships, information sharing, connections across expertise, public relations, or simply space for the deliberation of weighty topics that otherwise don’t get much priority to be explored.

— Ksenya Samarskaya, TDC Managing Director

1947

The TDC began a lecture series called ‘Ten Talks on Type’.

From the very beginning, the mission of the club was education, and it has not changed throughout the years.

We are constantly expanding our formats and methods: lectures and classes, exhibitions and workshops—everything we do aims to amplify the power and knowledge of typographers.

— Carol Wahler, TDC Executive Director

From 1955 to 2021 the TDC used cups for the judging process. © Type Directors Club.

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1955

The first TDC competition was held to recognize outstanding work in the profession.

1960s

The TDC recruits its first woman member, designer Beatrice Warde.

Beatrice Warde visiting a TDC event, 1953. © Type Directors Club.

The TDC Typography exhibition goes international, starting with Germany, shortly after traveling to the United Kingdom, then touring in Asia, with a show in Tokyo, Japan in 1970s.

1967

The first TDC Medal was awarded to Hermann Zapf for significant contributions to, and achievements in, the art and craft of type and typography. As of 2022, there have been 34 medalists.

I became involved with the TDC in 1983 through my family business, Cardinal Type Service. My husband Allan worked in our company and his client, Jack Odette, was the 29th chairman of the TDC.

Mr. Odette asked if Cardinal could store the entry packages that were shipped to the TDC office. Allan asked me if I would act as a facilitator. On seeing all the packages piled up in his office, I brought them into the room and organized them (not knowing how they should be organized).

Jack was very impressed, and asked if I would like to work part-time opening and cataloging the entries. I said yes.

—Carol Wahler, TDC Executive Director

Invitation for a lunch meeting with Ed Benguiat, 1979. © Type Directors Club.

1980

The first TDC annual book is published. Bonnie Hazleton, first female President of the Club, is elected.

Bonnie Hazelton, TDC President, 1980–81. © Type Directors Club

1987

The TDC’s first international conference Type 1987 was held in Manhattan, giving participants the opportunity to gather with “stars” from outside the US like Adrian Frutiger and Neville Brody.

A New York Times article written at the time of Type 1987 notes the participants sharing trade secrets and touting “the pleasures of a well-wrought ‘w,’ or a curvaceous ‘q’”, all while worrying over the new digital frontier. Digital technology, it was generally agreed, was both the main hope and main danger for the future of typeface design.

In the late 1980s around the advent of desktop publishing, the typesetting world was turned upside down. Once digitally set type reached sufficient quality, type houses died. The type director job may have become defunct, but the Type Directors Club kept the name. Art directors or type creators became the new type director.

1991

TDC membership first opens to the general public, including student members.

1994

TDC scholarships, historically given to NYC design schools, become national and global—reaching out to the rest of the U.S. and to schools in other nations.

1998

Paul Shaw and James Montalbano began the TDC2 typeface design competition, with a team of international type designers and script experts to review entries from all over the globe.

2005

TDC teams up with SoTA—the Society of Typographic Aficionados—to bring TypeCon to New York. The conference is called Alphabet City.

TDC medal awarded to Günther Gerhard Lange, 2000. © Type Directors Club.

2010

TDC helps launch Type@Cooper, the first postgraduate certificate in typeface design in the United States, held at Cooper Union in New York.

TDC63 Traveling Exhibition “World’s Best Typography”, Shanghai, 2017

2015

The TDC created its first scholarship open to worldwide participation—in honor of its first female member, Beatrice Warde. The scholarship awards promising women and nonbinary students a $5,000 tuition stipend.

2018

As part of a rebranding led by Debbie Millman, the TDC adopted the Type Drives Culture conference slogan. The same year, the club held the first Ascenders competition, aimed to promote the hottest designers under 35; and created a BIPOC scholarship, which was later renamed the Adé Hogue Scholarship.

2020

The TDC closed after financial insolvency collided with the resignation of board member Juan Villanueva, who, in an open letter, called it a “racist organization”. Later that same year it merged with The One Club for Creativity.

2021

The TDC Typeface Design competition was expanded by Ksenya Samarskaya and Nadine Chahine to include more script coverage and global judges allowing more players to join the field.

There’s a level of nuance and conversation that you have when there are multiple experts in a single script or genre, debating and bringing disparate opinions to the forefront.

I find that when it’s one expert or less in the room—the safer designs tend to win. There’s a lean toward not making a mistake, not overstepping. So you get more middle-of-the-road or traditional entries winning, or ones that translate into something in the judges’ native scripts that they can easily understand.

So by bringing in multiple contrasting viewpoints of different scripts to debate the entries, it allows for a richer final book, and a richer learning experience for those in the room.

—Ksenya Samarskaya, TDC Managing Director

The World’s Best Typography—The 42. Annual of the Type Directors Club,  2021

2022

Ksenya Samarskaya was appointed as TDC Managing Director with a mission to make it more open, diverse, and culturally engaging.

I was born in the ‘Second World’ [USSR] and left it right around the time the term dissolved. So for me, growing up with Cyrillic, the entwining of text and culture, type and identity, is incredibly personal.

In 2022, I was appointed to serve as the first managing director in the club’s 75-year history and since then I’m slowly pivoting it to be more future-forward, more open and more expansive.

— Ksenya Samarskaya, TDC Managing Director

Today, these efforts are in full swing. The TDC changed its pricing structure, so the majority of countries worldwide now get steep discounts.

The branding for the club’s main competition and book were made by a non-western designer for the first time, Ryu Mieno. One Asia Creative Awards also launched a TDC Typography discipline, incorporating a greater typographic focus in their advertising and design competition.

In October 2022, the TDC is helping support Inscript, a type festival at the forefront of technological innovation, and in November, the TDC will host Ezhishin—a first-of-its-kind conference about Native North American typography.

Beyond Univers and Avenir

Akira Kobayashi reminisces on Adrian Frutiger