Idea and History

In 2008 the Armenian Ministry of Culture founded a national type competition. When the typographic society Munich (tgm) visited Armenia in 2009 a new organisation was born: since 2010 both institutions organize the type contest successfully together. Every year the winning entries of the competition are documented and international presented in an exhibition (e.g. in Alexandria, Moscow, Munich, St. Petersburg).

In 2012 the first GRANSHAN Conference took place in Yerevan (UNESCO World Book Capital 2012) with guests and speakers from all over the world. This conference was focused on the technical challenges by the integration of non-Latin typefaces – and on script systems like Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Indian and of course Armenian.
In Armenian the word for script is “Granshan” – the original idea for the GRANSHAN competition comes from Edik Ghabuzyan, who is the leading Armenian type designer. Together with Boris Kochan he is chairman of the type competition and the conceptional force behind the competition and help to coordinate the conferences.