TYPE SPECIMEN BOOKLET By: Mariah Bly
These were my first deisgns that I went with. I ended up changing them up because I did not like how the black lines were not matching up.
Optima is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf between 1952 and 1955 for the D. Stempel Ag foundry, Frankfurt, Germany. Though classified as a sans-serif, Optima has a subtitle swelling at the terminal producing a suggestion of a glyphic serif. Optima’s design follows humanist lines, but it’s variant is merely an oblique, essentially a sloped roman without characteristic italic letterforms such as a single-story A and rouded base of V and W. This is more typical of a realist sans-serif such as Helvetica or Univers.
Hermann Zapf
History
Optima Character Use Much used from the late 50’s through the 60’s. Has kind of faux classy quality, so many graphic deisgners gravitate toward it.
Design History
Characteristics
The Bitsream verson is called Zapf Humanist. A new reworking, called Optima Nova. It replaced the orginal sloped roman with a newly designed true italic.
Italic is a sloped roman, not a true italic. Although a humanist sans serif, optima has a purely vertical axis. Tapered slopes similar to serifed faces.
Hermann Zapf was born November 8th, 1918. He is a German typeface designer who lives in Darmstadt, Germany. He is married to calligrapher and typeface designer Gudrun Zapf. Zapf’s work, which includes Palatino and Optima, as been widely copied, often against his will. The best known example may be Monotype’s Book Antiqua, with Microsoft Office. In 1993, Zapf resigned from AType over what he viewed as its hypocritica I attitude toward unauthorized copy by prominent Atype members.
History Hermann Zapf
This is my final copy that I ended up going with. I really like how it turned out. Overall, this project was real fun and I learned a lot.