: : Discover all the entries in the Valentype 2011 Gallery : :

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 can use any typeface to design your love declaration, or use the sample setter on fontshop.com. Take a screenshot or CTRL-click the image produced by the system and download it to your hard drive. Then open it in Photoshop. You can either use the image of the type in the program itself, or turn the background transparent and change the colour of the letters, and import it into Illustrator or Indesign, or another lay-out program of your choice.

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).

The winner of the very first Valentype was Ruben David Marques. His love declaration for FF Legato won because (a) it was a true love letter (b) he very cleverly integrated the designer's name in the declaration (c) it was genuinely funny (d) it looked good as well and (e) frankly almost everyone I showed the gallery picked his entry as the best one.

The contest starts now, and your submission must reach us before Valentine's Day ends: next Monday, February 14th 2011 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 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.

See last year's gallery.

The contest is open to anyone: amateurs, students and professionals alike, men and women and transgenders, 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. ; )

For Valentype 2009 Chris Carpenter's love declaration for FF Meta was the one entry that every member of the jury – FontShop Germany chief marketing officer Jürgen Siebert, FontShop San Francisco type director Stephen Coles, FontFont marketing director Ivo Gabrowitsch, and myself – had on their shortlist, and high up at that. Just like 2008's winner, Chris' design is brilliant in its simplicity. With dry humour and wit he surprised us by turning the concept of a love declaration upside-down. He cleverly played off the often-recurring phenomenon of exclusive corporate faces which are coveted by type lovers, and which are – just like unrequited love – even more desirable because they are unattainable. A great concept, well executed without any unnecessary frills.

ProcedureSend us an e-mail with "Valentype2011" (no space) and the name of the typeface in the subject line. This is crucial because we filter incoming e-mails: no Valentype2011 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.

The winner of the 2009 Valentype contest in the category OurType was Jürgen Sanides' love declaration for Amalia. Very good use of FF Mister K and a nice play of words made Rudy Geeraerts (OurType head honcho) and me forgive the bright yellow background and somewhat ghastly cyan border (just our personal taste).

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 following foundries responded to our e-mail invitation, and have agreed to this.

AliasAlphabet SoupBaselineBold MondayBorges LetteringClub-21Dalton MaagDevice FontsDSTypeEmtypeexljbrisThe Font Bureau, Inc.FontFontFountainGestaltenHVD FontsIdentikalJust Another FoundryLetter PerfectMark Simonson StudioMoretypeOurTypePorchez TypofonderieProcess Type FoundrySudtiposSuitcase Type FoundryTeeline FontsTypejockeysTypeTogetherTypothequeUnderwareVirus FontsURW++WiescherWillerstorfer Font Foundry

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

Header:The lovely Liza Pro by Underware