Fonts of Hermann Zapf in the Linotype Library

Hermann Zapf is renowned the world over as a master calligrapher and type designer. Throughout his tremendous life, he has contributed volumes to the history of typography. His oeuvre encompasses text faces, symbol fonts, and even script designs, such as the new classic Zapfino. So many of his typefaces have entered our daily lives that it is impossible to image contemporary design without them. Below are all of his digital designs for Linotype.
More about the fonts:


Aldus™
This typeface was originally intended to be the book or text weight for his Palatino™ font family. It was instead released as a separate font with the name Aldus™ in 1954. Aldus has the distinction of being lighter and narrower than Palatino, which makes it a good choice for book typography, though Palatino has also gained popularity as a text face. In addition to the regular book weight, Aldus has its own beautiful italic, small caps, and oldstyle figures. The typeface is named for the fifteenth-century Venetian printer and publisher, Aldus Manutius.
In 2005, Hermann Zapf and Linotype created a revised version of Aldus which is now called Aldus nova. Aldus nova is part of the Palatino nova font family which belongs to Linotype´s Platinum Collection.


Aurelia™
The design for Aurelia is based on the forms of Jenson, an Old Style typeface developed by Nicolas Jenson in 1470 which still influences type design today. Zapf gave Aurelia a bit of his own personal style and adapted it to the demands of modern technology. Aurelia is a robust and classic font, suitable for both text and headlines. The family of typefaces was originally designed for use with the typesetting machines produced by the German company Dr.-Ing Rudolf Hell GmbH which was later merged with Linotype. The name Aurelia is a nod to the Roman emperor Aurelianus (214–275), who built the Via Aurelia in Italy.


Edison™
Edison is the result of Hermann Zapf’s wish to create a typeface with maximum legibility for the Digiset typesetting machine (a typesetter produced by the German firm Dr.-Ing Rudolf Hell GmbH in Kiel).
The lowercase letters of Edison are enlarged as the result of reading tests, while the capital letters are slightly reduced. The 8 point size – normally used for newspapers – look more like 9,5 point. This enlarged x-height of the Edison lowercase letters was the result of tests on newspaper pages with bad (gray) inking to find the most comfortable proportions and the weight for the basic roman. This all is important because good typefaces tailored to the purpose of getting information easily from the printed page is of the same importance as the presentation of the message itself.
Hermann Zapf’s Edison is a modern, wilful newspaper font. Its free and individual forms mark this font as a newsprint font of the new generation. The strong strokes of Edison can give an impression of a slab serif font and its robust forms make this font very flexible. Even inferior paper and newsprint techniques cannot disturb Edison’s characters or classic impression.


Kompakt™
Kompakt is one of the early typefaces of type designer Hermann Zapf, whose Palatino has long been a standard in almost every area of application. Kompakt consists of a single weight and was designed in 1952, two years after Palatino. It was produced by the foundry D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, where Zapf was at the time in the artistic department. The figures of this extremely strong and heavy typeface are decidedly those of a broad tipped pen. When enlarged, the sharp outlines of the characters can be clearly seen.
The unique dynamic of the alphabet is a result of its strong serifs, which on the lower case letters almost connect the letters in a line. Together with the slight slant to the right, this gives Kompakt the character of handwriting, making it look like it is always striving to go forward. Kompakt is an excellent choice for advertisements, especially for posters which should display a hint of nostalgia, and should be used only in headlines.


Marconi™
Marconi was created by Hermann Zapf in 1973 for the Digiset, a digital typesetting system produced by the German firm Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell GmbH. Zapf’s design was developed as a text face for books and magazines. The round forms of the Marconi follow the principle of the superellipse. The lowercase letters are enlarged as the result of reading tests, while the capital letters are slightly reduced. The 8 point size - normally used for newspapers - look more like 9 1/2 point.
Marconi is a legible typeface with its large and open lowercase letters it is ideal for long text blocks in newspaper, book and magazine production.


Medici Script™
Named for the Renaissance Medici family of Florence and designed by Hermann Zapf for Linotype in 1974, Medici is a calligraphic font that simulates the look of a broad-edged pen on rough paper. It is considered a precursor to Zapf’s work for the ITC Zapf Chancery series.


Melior™
Melior font exhibits a robust character through classic and objective forms. Versatile and extremely legible, Melior font can be used for a variety of texts and point sizes.


Noris Script™
Noris is the latin name of Nuremberg, Hermann Zapf’s native town. Nuremberg is a town with great tradition of writing masters like Johann Neudörffer (1497–1563), Wolfgang Fugger (1515–1568), and Rudolf Koch (1876–1934). The idea of Noris was to get the spontaneity of a quick handwritten script using a broad edged pen into the pattern of a typesetting system. It was first released for the Linofilm system in 1976.