Museum of Typography: time to enter the 4th International Poster Contest

It is a definite call to arms for the lover of the letterforms. The Museum of Typography, Crete, Greece, has announced the 4th International Poster Contest about Typography and Printing, as the Greek word “τυπογραφία” to which the museum is dedicated, includes both arts.

Participants are mainly professionals and students of graphic and visual arts, as well as amateurs who can translate their ideas into posters. The thirty posters that will be distinguished by the jury will be presented at an exhibition, hosted at the amphitheater of the Museum for a year, until the next competition.

The aim of the contest is to connect the present and future of graphic arts to typography, printing and their history.

The creators of the first three posters that will be distinguished, will also receive money awards. Dimitris Arvanitis, Yannis Garedakis, Lila Kalogeri, Antonis Papantonopoulos, Tzanetos Petropouleas and Juan Diego Restrepo, winner of the 3rd poster contest are the jury of this year’s competition. The poster exhibition will be inaugurated on Saturday 23 June 2018, at 7:30 pm. During the event the thirty best posters will be presented and their creators will receive honorary dinstinctions.

 Please note that all participants must send their creations by Sunday, May 13th 2018 by email to typography.poster@gmail.com. The entry should be accompanied by a text file containing the contact details and– optionally – a brief description of the project (up to 100 words).

 The history of the Museum of Typography is closely connected to the history of the newspaper Haniotika Nea. As early as in the beginning of the 60’s, the founder of the newspaper Yannis Garedakis started working as a journalist in the historical newspaper of Hania Paratiritis and the Athens newspaper Vima, while at the same time, he was a member of the journalistic team that covered the newspapers of the Lambrakis Press Company in Crete for 20 years. In 1967, at a difficult period for newspapers, Haniotika Nea was published for the first time.

“I was still a young man when I first entered the field of the regional press, working for the historical newspaper Paratiritis, founded by the great Cretan statesman Polychronis Polychronidis. Not by choice, I should add. I did not regret it. In fact, I can honestly say that I was rather fortunate. There I was, all of a sudden, inside a basement, cooped up in a corner, preparing news transcripts – you see, there were no news agencies, no Internet, etc. back then – and making corrections. Across the room, in front of the typesetting benches, typographers assembled the type, letter by letter, composing the text. Standing up for hours, quiet, as if they were attending a sacred ritual, they arranged letters with the composing stick forming sentences, then the galleys with complete texts and finally the pages of the newspaper. Tired but proud at the end of the day. Last touch on their work – to me, it was a kind of caressing of the typographic plate, before the printing started. Everyone expecting the first page, the second, then the third… To get the newspaper at three or four in the morning and then go to bed. Exhausted but at the same time clearly satisfied. A few years later, those images came to mind when I started the publication of Haniotika Nea with the help of a few friends. Printers and Linotype operators, working together in dark basements and sheds, were putting up a fight for every form of publication. With love and respect towards the lifeless objects of their work… Those typographic objects, printing machines, typographers and operators should not be forgotten. Objects and machines should be maintained, the memory of typographers and operators should be honoured: that was the first thought that came to my mind” notes Garedakis.

“The idea for the creation of a Museum of Typography started to spin around my head about three decades ago. The years passed, and the newspaper blossomed economically thanks to its readers and advertising clients. At that point began the quest in the wonderful world of typography and its people and the journey leading to the foundation of the Museum. This quest, of course, would not have reached its destination had it not been for Michalis Grigorakis, my old friend and partner, who shared my dream and joined me in this journey.”

The Museum was inaugurated on May 2005.