Stefano Baldassari was TYPA’s artist in residency from August-September 2025.
Stefano Baldassari is a designer graduated with an MA in Typeface Design at the University of Reading, in 2023 he won the Legacy of Letters scholarship, a research practice tour around several libraries and letterpress workshops around Italy. He has given letterpress workshops at the Printing Museums of Jesi, Italy and type design workshops at Rome University of Fine Arts. Since 2024 he has been teaching lettering at the Academy of Fine Arts in Catania and the REA Academy in Rome. In 2023 he joined CAST Type Foundry where besides his contribution as associate designer he is now responsible for the typefaces quality control.
During his time at TYPA Stefano researched new possibilities for the letterpress workshops at TYPA and how to connect it with the graphic design heritage of Estonia and more specifically of the city of Tartu. He found the perfect fit for these purposes in the work of the Tartu native designer, Tõnu Soo.
Soo studied at Tartu Art School and the Estonian State Institute of Arts, and during his career has been creating eclectic and innovative lettering for several Estonian newspapers and magazines, however his alphabets had never been digitized.
Stefano held a symposium on the 30th of August 2025 to discuss and deepen the research about Tõnu Soo, with the goal of collaborative practice involving the local design community. The symposium included a demonstration and test printing of the wood version of Soo’s alphabet revived by Stefano during his residency.
You can find Stefano Baldassari on Instagram by clicking here!