Typeface exhibition unveiled at UN Headquarters in New York

The 100 best typeface designs used in global written communication over the past five years are on display at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, the winners of a global competition organized as part of the UN Year of Dialogue among Civilizations in 2001.

The exhibition, which opened this evening and runs through 9 February, is the result of an unprecedented worldwide competition organized by the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI). Judging for the competition, called bukva:raz! - Russian for "letter:one!" - took place in Moscow in December 2001, where a jury of distinguished typographic experts in multilingual typography picked the 100 winners from among more than 600 entries from 30 countries, representing 14 different alphabets or writing systems.

The travelling exhibition debuted last September at ATypI's annual conference in Rome, and it was shown in October and November in Vienna. The UN venue represents its first showing in North America.

Kicking off the three-week run at UN Headquarters, Giandomenico Picco, Secretary General Kofi Annan's Personal Representative for the UN Year of Dialogue among Civilizations, said he hoped that the exhibition will "break boundaries and encourage better and easier communication among individual human beings."