
The Type Directors Club, the world’s leading typography organization, awarded Erica Holeman, assistant professor in graphic design, a Certificate of Typographic Excellence for her work on the “Stanford D.School: Teaching + Learning Yearbook,” as part of the 2022 TD68 Communication Design competition.
The competition now in its 68th year recognizes typographic excellence and innovation along with the art and craft of typography and design. The Type Directors Club, established in 1946, hosts annual competitions in support of emerging, early career, and world-renowned typographic talent, showcasing each year’s winning work in an exhibition at New York’s Cooper Union. After their initial debut, exhibitions travel to museums, schools, and design organizations around the U.S. and 50 cities in 20 countries across the globe.
This year, 62 countries were represented among the 253 winning projects selected from more than 2,000 entries. The annual competition was judged by a panel of 27 leading designers from a dozen countries.
Holeman's winning publication is an annual "yearbook" for the teaching and learning team at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, d.school, at Stanford. She designed the book in collaboration with New York designer Daniel Frumhoff. The book features commissioned photography from the d.school, which was left unusually empty during the pandemic. Paired with bold typography and a bright palette, the publication captures the team’s innovative methods. Lush, abstract photographs introduce each of the book’s three sections, which are color-coded for easy navigation.
The yearbook design also was recognized by Communication Arts, a professional journal for visual communications and was published in the Design Annual 62 in September 2021, with more than 25,000 copies distributed. The book also was featured by the internationally renowned Klim Type Foundry featured it on their website and was accepted into the Dallas Society of Visual Communications 2021 Dallas Show.