Granshan 2012 - the 5th International type design competition for non-Latin fonts. Closing date: May 21

The submission deadline for GRANSHAN 2012, the 5th international competition for non-Latin type will run until the 21st of May 2012. The competition is held by the Cultural Ministry of the Republic of Armenia and the Typographic Society Munich (tgm - Typographische Gesellschaft Munchen).

For the first time, the two typographic languages 'Indian' and 'Arabic' can be entered, completing the already existing categories of 'Armenian', 'Cyrillic' and 'Greek'.

To mark '500 years of Armenian books' in 2012, celebrated by the Republic of Armenia, Latin alphabets are also being considered for the competition. By doing this, the organisers want to express the diversified networking approach of the Armenian typography and book industry: the first Armenian book was printed in 1512 in Venice.

Back then, Armenia was one of the first states to use Gutenberg's revolutionary technology. In order to ensure the participation of a maximum number of typography designers and type foundries in the anniversary year, the submission window is extended to include typographies that have been published within the last ten years.

The GRANSHAN competition was first held in 2008 and seeks to emphasise the importance of writing within the cultural sphere and draw attention to less frequent non-western typography systems in times of globalisation. The competition is organised in cooperation with TGM since 2010.

The entries will be judged from the 14th to the 16th of June 2012 in Yerevan, UNESCO's world book capital of 2012, during a conference on non-Latin alphabet systems. The award-winning typographies will subsequently be exhibited in Yerevan, Munich and Hong Kong.

The organiser Typographische Gesellschaft München (tgm) was founded in 1890 by printers and typesetters, and is Europe’s largest organisation dedicated to typography.

In 2011, Alexandra Korolkova won the Grand Prize of 1,000 Euro for the 'Belladonna' type. More information can be found at www.granshan.org.