The One Club for Creativity (TOCC), a leading nonprofit organization that supports and celebrates the creative community, announced a merger agreement with the Type Directors Club (TDC), a global typography organization. This brings TDC under the TOCC umbrella, providing resources and infrastructure to expand its scope.

The merger was approved in a vote by Boards and membership of both organizations, and is now pending approval by the New York State Attorney General’s office. As part of The One Club for Creativity, TDC will continue as an autonomous, committee-based organization and maintain its highly-regarded activities.

Established in 1946 in New York, TDC celebrates and amplifies the power of typography and serves as a global community united by the shared belief that type drives culture and culture drives type. The organization halted operations this past July due to organizational and financial challenges, both of which are being addressed.

“TDC is an important creative organization with a rich heritage, and brings a great new dimension to the TOCC and the global creative community at large,” said Kevin Swanepoel, CEO of The One Club. “This marks a new chapter for the TDC. It’s a chance to redefine the organization and what it means to be a member.”

TDC produces The World’s Best Typography annual, showcases winning work in an exhibition at The Cooper Union in New York, and coordinates traveling exhibitions to museums, schools and design organizations globally. It also hosts and sponsors conferences, classes, workshops and exhibitions.

“The TDC simultaneously faced organizational and financial issues, and this merger offers the infrastructure for a fresh start so our Advisory Board can instead focus on what it’s good at: promoting typographic excellence with an anti-racist commitment to broaden what our industry lauds,” said Elizabeth Carey Smith, TDC past president.

One initiative already in the works is a new outreach program aimed at introducing typography and design to high-school students, particularly those in underserved communities. TDC’s interim board is now actively looking to invite candidates for the new TDC Advisory Board under TOCC.

The merger does not include the Typographic Design Center, a separate nonprofit entity that maintained TDC educational support initiatives. This allows the TDC to apply for educational grants for financial support of the physical archives and its digitization, as well as for the Typegeist academic publishing platform.

The move follows the successful 2016 merger of The One Club and the Art Directors Club (ADC), two of the most respected nonprofits in advertising and design, to form The One Club for Creativity as the world’s foremost nonprofit organization for the creative community.

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