The Ignition Award — Blaze Type

2026
Laureates

Edition

2026

Laureates

5

Nestor Pavlidès · Zuzanna Górska · Mim Tejapaibul · Sidharth Jaishankar · Nadav Birenboim · Nestor Pavlidès · Zuzanna Górska · Mim Tejapaibul · Sidharth Jaishankar · Nadav Birenboim ·
Portrait of Nestor Pavlidès

Laureate

Nestor
Pavlidès

École Estienne

Nestor Pavlidès studies type design at École Estienne in Paris (DSAA Design typographique) and specialises in Greek type, with a practice strongly influenced by Dutch book design. A first version of Marika was used to typeset a bilingual English–Greek book on Markos Botsaris published by the National Historical Museum in Athens.

Typeface

Marika

Serif · 5 styles · Latin + Greek + Cyrillic

A multiscript serif with Book and Display cuts, Bold and Italic, drawn between chancery handwriting and lapidary stone engraving: cursive and gestural, with sharp, dry terminals. It reinterprets Chancery script as a semi-serif, upright italic; the name comes from the affectionate Greek, Turkish and Russian diminutive for Maria.

Serif5 stylesLatin · Greek · Cyrillic
Portrait of Zuzanna Górska

Laureate

Zuzanna
Górska

Academy of Fine Arts, Katowice

Zuzanna Górska is a visual communication designer working across branding, no-code web design and typography, and graduated from the MA in Graphic Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice in June 2026. Her research focuses on typography in school textbooks and educational materials. Escada is her first extensive typeface, developed under Robert Jarzec, Agnieszka Małecka-Kwiatkowska and Zofia Oslislo-Piekarska.

Typeface

Escada

Display · Variable · 3 styles · Latin

A display family in Light, Regular and Bold plus a variable version, inspired by 20th-century advertising lettering and brush-pen strokes. Dynamic forms meet stencil-like elements, aimed at branding for gastronomy, culture, design and craft.

DisplayVariable3 styles
Portrait of Mim Tejapaibul

Laureate

Mim
Tejapaibul

ECAL, Lausanne

Pornpiya (Mim) Tejapaibul is a type and graphic designer from Bangkok who recently graduated from the MA in Type Design at ECAL. Her practice is rooted in vernacular typography and multiscript type, and her master's thesis Signs & Sentiment documents Bangkok's vernacular signage. She pushes Latin letterforms with Thai influences and wants to challenge the Latinization of Southeast Asian scripts.

Typeface

Laisen Casual

Script · 1 style · Thai + Latin

The handwriting style of Laisen, a Thai–Latin display family inspired by Bangkok's vernacular signage. Drawn from marker signwriting (fast, expressive and visibly shaped by the hand) for signage, posters and advertising.

ScriptThai · LatinDisplay
Portrait of Sidharth Jaishankar

Laureate

Sidharth
Jaishankar

EsadType, Amiens

Sidharth Jaishankar is a type and graphic designer from Chennai, now in the post-diploma type design programme at EsadType, ÉSAD Amiens. He spent three years as a type designer at EkType in Mumbai, and is interested in books, publishing, editorial families and the relation between hand, tool and letterform.

Typeface

Tac

Display · 13 styles · Latin + Tamil

An informal editorial family of 13 styles drawn from expressive hand-lettering made with unconventional tools: a folded pen giving quick, energetic shapes. It looks to Tamil book covers and magazines of the 1960s–80s, with their hand-drawn elements and paste-up composition.

Display13 stylesLatin · Tamil
Portrait of Nadav Birenboim

Laureate

Nadav
Birenboim

Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design

Nadav Birenboim is in his final year of Visual Communication at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. NovoRelic is his graduation thesis, built after analysing eighteen manuscripts and translating the inconsistencies of the broad nib into a variable system.

Typeface

NovoRelic

Display · Variable · 3 styles · Hebrew + Latin

A bilingual display typeface reviving Ktav Beinoni, a largely forgotten medieval non-cursive Hebrew script, paired with 12th-century Latin Proto-Gothic. It is a contemporary interpretation for editorial and headline use rather than a strict revival.

DisplayVariableHebrew · Latin
All works — 2026