Meet the Legacy of Letters 2023 Scholarship Winners

The winners of the Legacy of Letters 2023 scholarships have been chosen. There were eighteen applicants for the three awards. It was a geographically diverse group with eleven different countries being represented. Furthermore, half of the applicants were female. The judging—by myself, Peter Kruty and Sayre Gaydos of Peter Kruty Editions (the printers for the Legacy of Letters 2023 letterpress workshop at the Tipoteca), and four of the sponsors for the awards—was blind, with each applicant’s portfolio stripped of personal identifiers. Despite the even gender balance of the applicants, three of the winners are male and one is female. In weighted ranked voting Eran Ben Barak, Stefano Baldassari, Frederick Wiltshire, and Hólmfriður Benediktsdottír were the consensus choices of the judges*. Congratulations to all four of them!

Hólmfriður Benediktsdottír.

Page from Hólmfriður Benediktsdottír’s book Copy of a copy—Shadowstudies. The letters were created from shadows of objects.

Hólmfriður Benediktsdottír
Hólmfriður is from Iceland. She is studying type design at the École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland. Her undergraduate degree is in Visual Communication from Listaháskóli Íslands [Iceland University of the Arts (IUA)] in Reykjavík.

Eran Ben Barak

Eran Ben Barak
Israeli-born Eran is currently a student in the Masters in Type Design program at the École Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne (ECAL) in Switzerland. His undergraduate degree in Visual Communication is from the renowned Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem.

Alma typeface by Eran Ben Barak.

Stefano Baldassari

Stefano Baldassari
Stefano completed his undergraduate education at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Macerata, located in the Marche region of his native Italy. He is now a student in the MA Typeface Design program at the University of Reading. 

Salotto typeface by Stefano Baldessari.

Frederick Wiltshire

Frederick Wiltshire
Frederick is a graduate of the Visual Communication program at the Arts University Bournemouth in England. Currently he is enrolled in the MA Typeface Design program at the University of Reading.

Fautive type family by Frederick Wiltshire.

Thanks
The scholarships have been made possible by funding from Mark Simonson of Mark Simonson Studio, Monotype, Cyrus Highsmith of Occupant Fonts, Peter Bi’lak of Typotheque, Veronika Burian of TypeTogether, Jeremy Tankard of Jeremy Tankard Typography, James Edmondson of Ohno Type, and two individuals who wish to remain anonymous.

* Each judge chose their top five candidates. Then the choices were assigned a weighted score (e.g. 5 points for first place, 4 points for second place, etc. down to 1 point for fifth place) and each applicant given a total score.