Gudrun Zapf von Hesse

Gudrun Zapf von Hesse (born January 2, 1918) is a typographer, calligrapher and book-binder. She is the 1991 winner of the Frederic W. Goudy Award. She has also designed several fonts.

Von Hesse served a book-binding apprenticeship with Otto Dorfner, finishing with a Master’s Diploma in 1940. She pursued an independent course of studies on calligraphy and letterforms, concentrating on the work of Rudolf Koch and Edward Johnston. After World War II, she opened her own book bindery, and learned punchcutting at the Bauer type foundry in Frankfurt.

From 1946 to 1954, Von Hesse taught lettering at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. After attracting notice at an exhibition of calligraphy, she was commissioned by the Stempel foundry in Frankfurt to design typefaces, and went on to a successful career as a typographer with Stempel. "In my opinion," she later said, " the best foundation for creating new alphabets is an intensive study of calligraphy." She married Herman Zapf, Stempel's art director and prolific typeface designer, in 1951, and the two managed thereafter to keep their professional work somewhat separate.

In 1991, Hesse was the second woman to receive the prestigious Frederic W. Goudy award, given by the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York. In 2001, she was recognized with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Friends of Calligraphy.

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