The four winners of the 1978 Design an Irish Typeface competition, digitised from the 1978 originals and free for anyone to use.
Na clónna
In 1978 Letraset, Kilkenny Design Workshops and D. O'Sullivan Graphic Supplies asked designers for an Irish typeface. The competition brochure lists four awards: a first prize for Céilí (printed there as Caill), Highly Commended for Carrick, and Commended for Kilfane and Tuam Uncial. All four were sold as dry-transfer lettering, in two sizes each.
an bhileog
1978
All four alphabets were printed together on one flyer, with their alternates, figures and loose accents. This copy survives as a photocopy, scanned at about 97 dots per inch, so each letter is only 20 to 35 pixels tall.
Outlines
The first versions of the fonts, up to 2.1, were drawn over these letters. Switch on the outlines or their points to see that tracing: how it follows the print, and where it parts from it.
Compare
Drag across the picture: the 1978 print, toner specks and all, on one side of the line, the first tracing filled in on the other.
S53909
At the foot of the flyer is a photograph of Kilfane's transfer sheet, with the same letters printed dozens of times. Its fine print reads ©1973, five years before the competition. That may be where the 1973 dates in some references come from, but a printed copyright line does not date the sheet itself.
Since 3.0
A photocopy at 97 dots per inch loses too much, so the fonts are now drawn from better prints in William Curran's archive at the National Irish Visual Arts Library. Kilfane comes from its alphabet specimen, with its capitals averaged over every impression on its transfer sheets; Carrick from its alphabet and the impressions on its transfer sheets; Tuam Uncial and Céilí from a sharper scan of this flyer, averaged with the clean offset print in the competition brochure.
1 · An chéad duais · First prize, £250
A light, calligraphic unicase drawn with a broad flat pen, with insular forms and old-style figures. Hecht was born in Bingen, came to England in 1939, assisted Hans Schleger and later taught at Croydon College of Art. Céilí won him £250 and a silver medallion; the brochure prints its name as Caill.
Céilí has other forms for some of its letters: insular r and s, uncial a and n, and a second a, d, e, j, l and v. Tap a letter with a dot under it to change it, or set the whole line at once. In your own work they are the stylistic sets ss01, ss02 and ss03.
céilí mór anocht!
céilí mór anocht!
céilí mór anocht!
céilí mór anocht!
HC · Ardmholadh · Highly Commended, £50
A chunky lower-case face, black as a stone. The name comes from carraig, rock. Curran trained as a lithographic artist under Bernardus Romein, worked at Browne & Nolan, and drew the lettering for the school primer An Príméar.
Castles are built a little at a time. Every stone falls into the place Carrick sets its letter, with the face's own spacing, so the wall reads as a line of type. Knock a stone out and it finds its way back; Shake brings the wall down, and it builds itself again.
carraig agus cloch
carraig agus cloch
C · Moladh · Commended, £25
Curran's second winner, and the only one of the four with capitals as well as lower case, plus Roman and insular alternates. It is named after Kilfane in County Kilkenny, and is reported on the Series C Irish banknotes designed by Robert Ballagh.
Kilfane is the only one of the four with true capitals, so Irish keeps its lower-case prefixes when it is set in capitals: TÍR NA nÓG. Its standard letters are Irish; its stylistic sets call up Roman forms (ss01) and insular forms (ss02), in all four styles. Each change is rubbed down letter by letter, as the face was from its 1978 transfer sheets.
Fáilte go Cill Chainnigh
Fáilte go Cill Chainnigh
Fáilte go Cill Chainnigh
Fáilte go Cill Chainnigh
C · Moladh · Commended, £25
A heavy uncial with blunt, square-cut strokes, reportedly made by cutting up Helvetica Bold. Hayes was a book designer and typographer, and he also designed the harp on Ireland's euro coins. Signal Type Foundry has since revived the face commercially as Jarlath.
Insular scribes ringed their initials with dots of red lead and filled the counters with colour. The dots here follow each letter's outline; the knotwork is generated fresh each time.
tuaim dhá ghualann
tuaim dhá ghualann
déan póstaer
Set in the four faces and printed in two inks, as on a risograph: each ink is its own plate, a little out of register and grainy where the drum ran short, and where the inks cross they print a third colour. Start from one of these, or from nothing.
Save
bain triail astu
Broken Irish is better than clever English.
os cionn an dorais
Irish towns are known for their painted shopfronts: a fascia board between two consoles, the name in gilded letters with a cast shadow, the trade written on the glass. Tuam Uncial went up over real shops. Put your own name up in any of the four.
gach litir
About four hundred characters in each face: every letter for Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and the languages of Western and Central Europe, the old dot-above lenition (ḃ ċ ḋ ḟ ġ ṁ ṗ ṡ ṫ), the insular letters and the Tironian ⁊.
LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH ACUTE
U+00E1
Na daoine
William Curran
1919–2016 · Carrick, Kilfane
A lithographic artist trained under Bernardus Romein, then a freelance designer and calligrapher. He drew the lettering for the school primer An Príméar. His archive, with Kilfane and Carrick specimens and transfer sheets, went to the National Irish Visual Arts Library in 2025.
hermann hecht
1923–1985 · Céilí
Born in Bingen, he came to England in 1939. He assisted the poster designer Hans Schleger and taught at Croydon College of Art. Where his drawings for Céilí are now is not known.
jarlath hayes
1924–2001 · Tuam Uncial
Book designer and typographer. Tuam Uncial reportedly appeared on Clannad's record sleeves and on shopfronts, and his harp is on the Irish euro coins. He shared his first name with St Jarlath, the patron saint of Tuam.
The award wording follows the competition brochure in the William Curran Archive (NIVAL). Other facts come from published sources, and some are reported rather than confirmed. Corrections are welcome on GitHub.
íoslódáil
Twelve fonts as OTF, TTF, WOFF and WOFF2, with a ready-made stylesheet, from the project's GitHub releases. They are named Céilí Digital, Carrick Digital, Kilfane Digital and Tuam Uncial Digital: independent digitisations, not the original type. No copyright is claimed: they are in the public domain (CC0 1.0), for any use, commercial work included.
Use them on a website: host your own copy
<!-- the ZIP's fonts/ and css/ folders, beside your pages -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/four-irish-typefaces.css">
h1 { font-family: "Céilí Digital", serif; }