Valentype | Testify and Win The Typeface You Love!

If you know what it's like to passionately love a typeface, here's a golden opportunity. Declare your love for a typeface* and you couldwin an official single license to four (4) weights/styles** in OpenType, Offc or Webfont*** format of that typeface(for example Regular, Italic, Bold, Black). This love declaration can take any form you like: a poem, an image, a short text, whatever you feel like creating. You have until Valentine's Day,Friday February 14th, so don't procrastinate!

To illustrate the possibilities I have included last year's winners in this post; galleries and winners from earlier years can be found through the Valentype tag on The FontFeed.

Those that say first love is blind

at best, must be

insipid tim'rous fools.

One glance upon your well proportion'd lines,

my heart was drawn

by your magnetic pull.

You fill my mind, no matter where I go

your face appears,

Oh Dax I love you so!

And yet I fear…

~

Days pass by, months stretch to years,

I wait alone

for smallest love returned.

Am I the fool to shed my ready tears,

about a love

so likely to be spurned?

My heart is fixed. In faithful tender tone,

I will be blind

to Serif and Didone.

Oh Dax, be mine?

~

Life would be a different place

with you, my love,

to aid in each design.

Your worthy form could lay a page with grace,

your words, I know

would better any line.

Twas meant to be – my heart is sure of this,

for Cupid's bow

has spoken not amiss…

… Dax, Romeo.

9 |Samalah Gray(Marlborough, New Zealand), winner of Valentype 2013, loves FF Dax

You can use any typeface to design your love declaration. For the early editions you were limited to the sample setter on fontshop.com if you wanted to use the typeface itself. Since last year however, thanks to the revolutionary (and free!) FontShop plugin, you can create your love declaration directly in the Adobe Creative Suite programs Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator or Indesign with the actual typeface you love!

The preferred language for text entries is English, but we accept Dutch, French, and German as well. Just make sure that we don't have to do anything to add your entry to the dedicated gallery which will be posted soon (see technical details below).

25 |Ruben David Marques(Leiria, Portugal), winner of Valentype 2013, loves FF Quadraat

The contest starts now, and your submission must reach us before Valentine's Day ends: next Friday, February 14th 2013 at midnight AKST. But there is one catch – we want at least fifty (50) submissions or the contest is void, annulled, nihil, zilch, nada. Fortunately you can enter up to three (3) submissions, so in theory if twenty very motivated people compete we're more than good. However if you submit more than one entry, your entries must be for different typefaces; you can't submit more than one love declaration for a typeface/family.

36 |Eva-Lotta Lamm(London, UK), winner of Valentype 2013, loves Fakir

The contest is open to anyone: amateurs, students and professionals alike, men and women and others, straight and gay and everything in between, all races, all religions, Atlanteans and subterraneans, earthlings and aliens, no restrictions, no boundaries. So get busy in the name of love and testify! The first time we ran the competition you had a little under 48 hours; now with a week to go I don't want to hear anyone complain. I expect submissions of the highest quality. ; )

50 |Laura Yates(Paris, France), winner of Valentype 2013, loves Fedra Serif B

ProcedureSend us an e-mail with "Valentype2014" (no space) and the name of the typeface in the subject line. This is crucial because we filter incoming e-mails: no Valentype2014 in the subject line means we won't see your submission. Include your name and full postal address in the message and your love declaration in attachment.Poems or short textsmust be saved in .TXT format.Typographic art or designmust be saved for web (Save for Web… command in Adobe Photoshop) as a High Quality JPEG (no progressive JPEG!), PNG, or GIF RGB image, measuring exactly 500 pixels wide and maximum 750 pixels high.The file name must read "YourFullName_FontName" (plus the file extension of course). Substitute "YourFullName" with your actual name (no spaces) and "FontName" with the name of the typeface you covet.Important

As evaluating and posting the entries is a hell of a lot of work:

We will not accept love declarations for fonts not included in the libraries of the participating foundries listed below.You can however design your submission with any typeface you like.We will not accept submissions of the wrong dimensions.We will not accept submissions that don't conform to the naming rules.

52 |Florian Fecher(Würzburg, Germany), winner of Valentype 2013, loves Vinter

Participating foundries

If anyone wonders why Valentype is restricted to the foundries listed below – although the four fonts are given away, the designer does get the royalties, just like with any regular sale. As in everything we endeavour, we want to do right by the designers who create these beautiful typefaces for us to use. The foundries in the list below responded to our e-mail invitation, and have agreed to this. I am still contacting some stragglers, so make sure to double-check if your preferred type foundry hasn't been added to the list at the last minute.

This year Font Diner is throwing in a $99 Mister Retro plug-in for Adobe Photoshop as a special prize for the best love letter to a typeface from Font Diner, Breaking The Norm, Filmotype, Lettering Inc., Neapolitan, Sideshow, or Tart Workshop.

Alan MeeksAliasAlphabet SoupAnatoletypeAtlas Font FoundryBaseline FontsBetatypeBold MondayBreaking The NormBureau RoffaCanada TypeCape Arcona Type FoundryClub-21CocijotypeDalton MaagDSTypeDevice FontsEmtypeexljbrisFaceTypeFilmotypeFont BureauFont DinerFontFontFONTYOUFountainGarageFontsGestaltenG-TypeHVD FontsIndian Type Foundry (only Latin typefaces)James Todd DesignJust Another FoundryLaura WorthingtonLettering Inc.Letters from SwedenLiebefontsMark Simonson StudioMonokromMoretypeMvB FontsNeapolitanNewlynOurTypeParaTypePositypeRosetta Type FoundryShinnTypeSideshowStephen Rapp Lettering DesignSudtiposSuitcase Type FoundryTart WorkshopTeeline FontsThree Islands PressTipoTipografiesTypejockeysTyperepublicTypesensesType-Ø-TonesTypeTogethertypographies.frTyponineTypothequeUnderwareURWVette LettersWiescherWillerstorfer Font Foundry

Missing foundries may simply have overlooked the invitation I sent out last week; it certainly doesn't always mean they didn't want to participate.

Header image:776.005 from Rear Viewed by Miranda Lehman

Typeface:Wishes Script by Sabrina M. Lopez, Typesenses