Type Gallery - Zapfino

Font Designer: Hermann Zapf, 1998

David Siegel in Palo Alto had the original idea of using the calligraphic work of Hermann Zapf created in 1944 as the basis for a calligraphic script in order to try out a new type of system for typesetting on the PC. Zapf himself was unable to achieve such an authentic script himself given the technical restrictions of hot metal composition. It nevertheless remained his dream for many years.

Gino Lee, who at that time lived in Boston, digitized the originals in 1993 and also digitized the drawings at a later point. The intention was to use a program for automatically mixing letters and including ligatures and symbols. This concept was then put on hold, since the programming was too complex. However, the Zapfino® font of 1993 already contained the basic concept for an alphabet with roman type capitals and three capitalized swash alphabets with variations of lower case letters, including ligatures and special swash characters.

Additional variations of individual characters, e.g various ampersands, are also available for selection, together with a number of ornaments. The typesetting process is not entirely straightforward and requires some skill on the part of the user. The capitals can also be used for a number of other roman types, e.g. in conjunction with Optima®.