Esterica

Undergraduate project in B.Des in Visual Communication Design.

The inspiration for this project stems from my late grandmother, Ester, born in Thessaloniki and a descendant of the Spanish expellees who spoke Ladino. To me, she represents an entire community whose speakers are rapidly disappearing, leaving the responsibility to the younger generation to preserve its principles, including its script and language.

My search for the visual expression of what I had always known as a spoken language led me to the discovery of Solitreo – a form of Jewish-Sephardic cursive handwriting once used by Ladino speakers, including in the Balkans, for everyday correspondence. This script almost entirely vanished with the revival of the Hebrew language and the adoption of Ashkenazi cursive handwriting, which remains in use today.

The project focuses on designing a typeface that revives the Solitreo script, based on various historical documents, most dating back to the first half of the 20th century. The goal is to bring to light an abandoned historical chapter and contribute to its preservation, while shaping a contemporary cultural reality in which this fading script and language come back to life.