Content by Karina Rodriguez; File prep by Anna Savinova

Optima
The typeface I am researching is Optima. The typeface
was created around 1952 and then was put on the internet for the
public to use in 1958. Optima is free for personal use but a license
must be bought if someone wants to use it in a commercial way.
It was designed by Hermann Zapf who is a graphic designer from
Germany. Zapf is also known for making the Palatino typeface al-
though Optima was one of his most famous font families. Optima - Roman - Itallic
was a part of the Stempel Type Foundry.
When designing Optima, he was inspired by the Classic - Medium - Medium Itallic
Roman font and also some letters inside a medieval church in Flor-
ence, Italy. Because this typeface was designed many years ago be- - Demi Bold - Demi Bold Itallic
fore access to the internet tools there are today, the typeface was
first created in metal. The use of metal took a lot of time so it took - Bold - Bold Itallic
a while for Optima to be used by the public. The style of the letters
were created with the use of the Golden Ratio rules. The main dif- - Black - Black Itallic
ference between his typeface and the Classic Roman typeface is that
he wanted to remove the serifs. Serifs are small lines that get added - Extra Black - Extra Black Itallic
to the ends of letters to add an extra element to the typeface.
To me this creates an effect of an approach to making a more
modern typeface, yet still keeping the elements of the Roma style
especially considering that Zapf found his inspiration in a church.
It also reflects the Roman typeface style with wide characters and a
variety of line weights, However, Optima was not the only typeface
without serifs with a Roman style. There isa typeface called Stellar It is a very universal typeface. Another example of the typeface being used
that was created before the one that Zapf made. was in the Vietnam Veteran Memorial in Washington, D.C. so all of the
The twelve typefaces from the font family of Optima in- vetern’s names were engraved on the memorial wall in Optima. Also the
cludes roman, italic, medium, medium italic, demi bold, demi bold large and well known company Estee Lauder uses Optima throughout their
italic, bold, bold italic, black, black italic, extra black, and extra black brand.
italic. There are also four companion fonts that contain accents and The font family is clean and all very easy to read hence why it can
work well with European languages. Optima can also be classified be used in many different projects with type. Optima works for around
as a Sans Serif font. Sans Serifs fonts are generally known to be very ninety-four languages making it very accessible to others around the world.
easy to read and they are basically letters that do not make use of the This typeface has both upper and lowercase letters which is nice because I
serifs at the end of a character. The line weights change throughout personally do not like typefaces that only give the option of having upper-
the letters of Optima. case letters. When lettering is in all uppercase letters it can cause an issue of
The font can be used for many purposes, whether it is for making legibility more difficult to understand.
a website, poster, reading, branding, books, and magazines. It was My personal favorite typeface from the Optima font family is the
even used in the 2008 elections for the US president in McCain’s Optima Medium. This is because it is the most legible typeface in my opin-
campaign. ion. Also, the lines are the right amount of bold where it is not too thin that
it is hard to read and not too thick where the text feels too heavy. I would
personally use this typeface in some sort of magazine that contains captions
or if Iwanted to write a book I would definitely use Optima. This typeface is
also great to use because there are so many options in terms of the types of
Optima in the font family so a project can havena variety of typefaces but
still remain cohesive.
It is said that Optima has a similar personality as the Garamond
and Centaur Font. The personality is a little modern while also maintaining
a classy and elegant look to it. Optima is able to have different line spac-
ings. There is no right or wrong, but people tend to lean towards having a
larger line spacing. When the line spacing is closer it does not really make
it noticeably more difficult to read, however it is generally used in a wider
setting. For example,when usingthe typeface in books, it is recommended
to use nine on a twenty-four point. Since Zapf created the typeface, there
have been other graphic designers that made typefaces that were inspired
by Optima. These include Pascal, Mentor, and Augusta.
Overall, Optima has had a great impact and use for many graphic
designers throughout the design world.With its simplicity it allows many
opportunities on how the typeface could beused. Though Optima does not
look like a super creative typeface it definitely has its small qualities that
make all the difference.