PRINT Awards Spotlight Type Design Excellence from 2012 to 2026

The final deadline for the 2026 PRINT Awards arrives today, prompting a retrospective of notable typefaces previously honored. In 2023, the Editors' Choice selection was Rozi Zhu's Ferrofluid Type, a display interface using Arduino boards and electromagnets to manipulate ferrofluid through code. Four years earlier, My-Lan Thuong of Sharp Type earned third place in 2025 for Rosalie, a display serif inspired by a medieval mural in Guérande, France. Looking back to 2016, Jason Tselentis highlighted Operator Mono from Hoefler & Co., designed by Andy Clymer, Jordan Bell, and Troy Leinster with artistic direction by Jonathan Hoefler, praised for coding applications. That same year saw Rod McDonald's Classic Grotesque for Monotype, a revival with 42 new weights, commended by Sean Adams of ArtCenter College of Design for its warmth over Helvetica. In 2012, Paul Shaw and Stephen Coles selected six American typefaces in their PRINT column Stereotype. The PRINT Awards and PRINT Magazine have consistently recognized designers whose work shapes global visual communication.