Typography is more than design. It’s the visible sound of language, the form of thought, the shape of identity.
And yet, in a world that so often speaks in Latin letters, countless scripts from Arabic to Tamil, from Greek to Khmer, remain on the margins of the global design stage.
The GRANSHAN Bloom Award 2025/2026 changes that.
This is the world’s first international competition for Communication Design Beyond Latin - a celebration of the world’s writing systems and the designers who bring them to life.
A Competition Where Every Script Speaks
The Bloom Award exists for one powerful reason: the world doesn’t write in Latin alone.
The competition recognizes outstanding typographic and communication design that uses scripts such as Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Greek, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, and South East Asian scripts.
Each submission is reviewed by experts who don’t just see design - they read it. In the original script, in its native language, and within its cultural, social, and emotional context.
That’s what makes the GRANSHAN Bloom Award one of a kind: where others might judge by aesthetics alone, GRANSHAN celebrates meaning, identity, and cultural intelligence.
Here, design is understood, not just admired.
A Global Platform for Distinct Voices
Under the theme “Where Scripts Bloom,” the competition invites entries that connect cultures, tell stories, and make the invisible visible.
Designers, typographers, studios, agencies, NGOs, brands, and students are all welcome to participate.
Whether your project is a poster in Arabic calligraphy, a Korean app interface, a Tamil book cover, or an experimental Thai type animation, this is your space to bloom.
Entries can be submitted in nine media categories, spanning the full spectrum of communication design: from Editorial & Publishing to Motion Graphics, Packaging, Visual Identity, and Experimental Work.
Judged by Those Who Know the Script
Each Script Group is led by a Script Chair and supported by media specialists who combine typographic mastery with design expertise.
This unique jury model ensures that every project is seen through two lenses:
the cultural depth of its script, and
the technical excellence of its medium.
From over 100 jurors worldwide to the international Grand Jury, which includes leading figures such as Freeman Lau, Anette Lenz, Apex Lin and Stefan Sagmeister. The evaluation process reflects GRANSHAN’s mission: to honour design that bridges craft, culture, and concept.
What Makes a Winner Bloom
Entries are judged across seven key criteria, with three weighted most heavily:
Concept & Innovation - bold ideas that push typographic boundaries.
Typographic Excellence - mastery of letterforms within their script.
Cultural & Social Relevance - design that resonates in time and place.
Winning entries receive the GRANSHAN Bloom Award and become part of a global online exhibition and permanent archive, ensuring lasting visibility.
The top 50 projects will earn the distinction “Best of the Best” - premiered at the GRANSHAN Bloom Award ceremony and showcased in a travelling exhibition around the world.
And there’s more: the Supporting Foundries’ Choice Award offers another spotlight. Partner type foundries may each select one awarded project that uses their typefaces with exceptional creativity, giving winners an extra wave of international exposure.
The Bloom Award was built by the community, for the community.
To make participation truly global, entry fees are scaled according to each entrant’s context - from students and freelancers to major agencies and institutions.
Every submission process is transparent, inclusive, and anonymized, ensuring that the work speaks for itself.
Behind this fairness stands the GRANSHAN Self Commitment Statement, a declaration that design must never be a platform for aggression, discrimination, or exclusion. Instead, it must remain what it has always been at its best: a force for understanding and belonging.
Why Enter the GRANSHAN Bloom Award
Because your script matters.
Because your culture deserves to be seen, read, and celebrated.
Because design is not just about form - it’s about the stories our letters tell.
The GRANSHAN Bloom Award invites you to make your script visible and your voice resonate in the global conversation of design.
Submissions open in December 2025, with Early Bird entries until 3 March 2026. Be among the first to get visibility and recognition in GRANSHAN’s global communications.
