Like the Roman capitals, Optima's 'E' and 'R' occupy about a half-square, the 'M' is wide and its sides are splayed. In his book About Alphabets, Zapf commented that his key aim in designing Optima's capitals, inspired by the Roman capital model, was the desire to avoid the monotony of all capital letters having a roughly square footprint, as he felt was true of some early sans-serif designs. Zapf was to work on the development of Optima during most of the following decade. He quickly sketched an early draft of the design on a 1000 lira banknote. While in Florence, Zapf was particularly interested in the design of the lettering in tombstones of the cemetery of the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence, in which the strokes subtly widen as they reach stroke terminals without ending in a serif. Interested in calligraphy and the history of Italian printing and lettering, Zapf first visited Italy in 1950. Portions of the text are copied onto one of his 1950 sketches. History Zapf cited this gravestone as inspiring Optima. Zapf retained an interest in the design, collaborating on variants and expansions into his eighties. To prove its versatility, Zapf set his entire book About Alphabets in the regular weight. Zapf intended Optima to be a typeface that could serve for both body text and titling. Optima was inspired by classical Roman capitals and the stonecarving on Renaissance-period tombstones Zapf saw in Florence on a 1950 holiday to Italy. Though classified as a sans-serif, Optima has a subtle swelling at the terminals suggesting a glyphic serif. Stempel AG foundry, Frankfurt, West Germany in 1958. ![]() ![]() Optima is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf and released by the D.
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