Calendar (2025: Pulled Thread, 2024: Plaid, 2023: 3 Strands of Floss, 2022: Type Family)

In the Calendar project, we drew our initial inspiration from textile samplers, where girls practiced and documented various needlework techniques, and applied the concept and format to calendars. Each design is first hand-embroidered, then photographed and printed at a 1:1 scale. In each edition, we have incorporated different visual and technical ideas, while simultaneously exploring how a textile artist and a graphic designer can work together. It has become a platform for accumulating research and practice within our own fields, in other words, our version of samplers. We feel highly grateful and encouraged to have received this award, and find it significant that the TDC recognizes the value of typographical expression in embroidery, something that tends to be overlooked within the field of typography.

Photographer: Ayako Nishibori

Masaki Komoto

Textile craftsperson and artist. Graduated from Metalwork in the Department of Industrial, Interior and Craft Design of Musashino Art University and the VAV – Moving Image department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. After his studies, he taught himself needlework techniques such as embroidery and knitting. In addition to his autonomous practice, he works on collaborative projects and commissions. Recent exhibitions include “1826” in Utrecht, Tokyo (OMA, Fukuoka) and “One Step Forward, Thank You” at Daikanyama Tsutaya Books. He also contributed embroidery work to issue 15 (“The Stitch”) of the Dutch design magazine MacGuffin.

Yuri Sato

Graphic designer based in the Netherlands. Graduated from the Department of French Literature at Sophia University in 2009, and the Graphic Design department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2020. Alongside an independent design practice, has worked since 2023 as a technical specialist in the academy’s letterpress and offset printing workshop. In 2025, Henri Jacobs, New Surface Research (Roma Publications, 2024), designed with Roger Willems, received an Honorary Appreciation at The Best Book Design from all over the World (Stiftung Buchkunst, Germany). In recent years, a number of publications have been selected for The Best Dutch Book Designs. Working closely with artists, explores a range of graphic design approaches, with an emphasis on concept, materiality, and production.