Saturday, 11:00am
11 April 2026
Tokyo type
Type Together
Veronika Burian
José Scaglione
Andy Altmann
Why Not Associates
David Ellis
Gordon Young
Ryoko Nishizuka
Frank Grießhammer
Jane Berezhna
Awards madness
Graphic design
Typography
Type design
The Tokyo TDC celebrates this year’s winners with an exhibition at Ginza Graphic Gallery (ggg) in Tokyo
The Tokyo TDC is an annual international graphic design competition focused upon visual expression of language and the written word, which includes an exhibition at the Ginza Graphic Gallery (ggg) in Tokyo, Japan until 16 May 2026. The exhibition features 120 highly rated works from the competition with a spotlight on the award winners and nominees.
Grand Prize winner Futura®100 Multiscript communicates in 12 scripts and languages including: Arabic, Armenian Cyrillic, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Khmer, Lao, Latin, Myanmar, PanAfrican Latin and Thai. Above. Tokyo TDC exhibition posters designed by Tsuguya Inoue.
Out of a total 3605 submissions from Japan and overseas, eleven works won prizes, ranging from a Type Design Prize to a Book Design Prize and more. The 2026 Grand Prize was awarded to Veronika Burian (featured in Eye 109) and José Scaglione of the indie type foundry TypeTogether for their font family Futura®100 Multiscript, for which they expanded renowned German typeface designer Paul Renner’s geometric sans-serif font Futura, originally created in 1927. This recent expansion resulted in a record-breaking twelve scripts and multiple languages.
Type Design Prize winners Ryoko Nishizuka, Frank Grießhammer for project Momochidori. Client: Adobe.
TDC Prize winner Jane Berezhna with project kinesics.regular in the RGB Experimental Work category.
The Tokyo TDC exhibition also features a special tribute to our friend Andy Altmann (1963-2025), co-founder of Why Not Associates and three-time Tokyo TDC Grand Prize winner. Altmann’s work was first recognised by the TDC Annual Awards in 2003 for A Flock of Words in the Public Art category (see ‘A Flock of Words’ in Eye 45). The installation, which was the result of a six-year collaboration with sculptors Gordon Young and Russell Coleman, comprises a 300-metre path located in English seaside resort Morcambe Bay. The area is known for its bird watching, and the path highlights poems, lyrics and sayings, all surrounding a distinct bird theme.
A special part of the exhibition features work by Why Not Associates, the practice founded by the late Andy Altmann (1963-2025) that won Tokyo TDC Grand Prize awards.
Left. Altmann at the award ceremony after party 2010. Right. A gift from Altmann To Tokyo TDC after the Tohoku earthquake in 2011.
Why Not Associates was also recognised in 2010 with a Grand Prize for the trailer for Unseen Gaza, a documentary aired on BBC Channel 4 in the United Kingdom, highlighting media restrictions in a time when Israel banned journalists from entering Gaza, and awarded again in 2012 for the Comedy Carpet with sculptor Gordon Young (See ‘Gag Pile’ on the Eye blog).
Eye 110 will include a tribute to Andy Altmann from family, friends and colleagues. Circa Press has initiated a Kickstarter to fund typo*, the final book conceived, designed and edited by Altmann.
Tokyo TDC exhibition at the Ginza Graphic Gallery (ggg).
The upcoming Tokyo TDC Annual Book Vol. 37 will feature 412 entries from the latest competition. The annual competition is now in its 36th edition, having been held every year since 1990. Entries will be open soon for the 2027 awards.
Eye is the world’s most beautiful and collectable graphic design journal, published for professional designers, students and anyone interested in critical, informed writing about graphic design and visual culture. It is available from all good design bookshops and online at the Eye shop, where you can buy subscriptions and single issues.