Sumy-based designer Mykhailo Rafailyk won an international font design competition

Sumy native Mykhailo Rafailyk won in one of the categories of the annual international Type Directors Club (TDC70) competition. He was awarded a Certificate of Typographic Excellence for the font Decutto.

The TDC competition was founded in New York over 70 years ago. Every year, judges are invited from different countries around the world. Participation in the competition is paid, but for Ukrainian authors, the organizers made special conditions during the war and waived the fee.

"Judges review anonymous work. More precisely, these are texts typed in a specific font. Judges do not know who the author is or what the font is called," said Mykhailo.

He won in the subcategory Single Axis Type Family in the Type Design category. The Decutto font has one axis — Weight.

A font family can have axes of weight, width, optical size, and so on. Within it, the font family has different styles. The most common font axis is Weight, which includes styles such as Light, Regular, Bold, and others. However, a font family can also contain several axes simultaneously, and even combine them with each other.

Printed posters featuring the fonts of the winners are being showcased at an exhibition in New York, as well as traveling to dozens of cities in the USA, Canada, China, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Taiwan, and others.

For my font, this is a chance to be seen. At the same time, it's an opportunity to talk about Ukraine and its culture. For example, the main poster indicates that the font was "crafted" in Ukraine in 2023. Another poster is entirely in the Ukrainian language. And the printed poster, which will travel to international exhibitions, tells about the lives of Ukrainians, which since 2022 have become fragile due to the Russian invasion, and how as a result, Ukrainians are toughening up and becoming stronger as a nation, - Mykhailo explained.