Optima Nova® font family
Designed by Hermann Zapf in 2002
Akira Kobayashi in 2002
Optima® was designed by Hermann Zapf and is his most successful typeface. In 1950, Zapf made his first scetches while visiting the Santa Croce church in Florence. He sketched letters from grave plates that had been cut about 1530, and as he had no other paper with him at the time, the sketches were done on two 1000 lire bank notes. These letters from the floor of the church inspired Optima, a typeface that is classically roman in proportion and character, but without serifs. The letterforms were designed in the proportions of the Golden Ratio. In 1952, after careful legibility testing, the first drawings were finished.
The type was cut by the famous punchcutter August Rosenberger at the D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt.Optima was produced in matrices for the Linotype typesetting machines and released in 1958. With the clear, simple elegance of its sans serif forms and the warmly human touches of its tapering stems, this family has proved popular around the world. In 2002, when it was finally possible to produce digital alphabets without technical limitations and compromises, and more than 50 years after the first sketches, an expansion and redesign of the Optima family was completed and released as Optima Nova .
Hermann Zapf and Japanese type designer Akira Kobayashi collaborated on the project, which included re-working of the existing weights and the addition of several new weights for a total of 40 fonts. Small caps, Old style Figures, light, heavy, and condensed fonts have been added.
The original Optima was never manufactured with a real italic, only an oblique version of the roman. Optima Nova has a complete range of beautifully designed real italics; the new italic forms , of the e, f and g are especially notable.
The titling face includes capital letters with special and unusual letter combinations and ligatures, making it an excellent choice for headlines, logos and advertising purposes. Optima continues to be an all-purpose typeface; and Optima Nova works for just about anything from book text to signage."
The type was cut by the famous punchcutter August Rosenberger at the D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt.
The original
The titling face includes capital letters with special and unusual letter combinations and ligatures, making it an excellent choice for headlines, logos and advertising purposes. Optima continues to be an all-purpose typeface; and Optima Nova works for just about anything from book text to signage."
Optima Nova Heavy Italic
Desktop fonts are designed to
be installed on a computer for
use with applications.
Licensed per user.
Annual web fonts are licensed for a set number of page views.
Annual web fonts are licensed
for a set number of page views.
Application licensing allows fonts to be embedded in your software applications. The license may be based on the number of titles or the number of installations.
Electronic Document Fonts can be
embedded in an eBook, eMagazine or
eNewspaper. Fonts are licensed
annually per issue.
Server fonts can be installed on
a server and e.g. used by automated
processes to create items.
A license is per server core CPU per year.
A Digital Ads license allows you to embed web fonts in digital ads, such as ads created in HTML5. These license is based on the number of ad impressions.
Optima Nova
You will receive all available versions
with your web font license.
with your web font license.
Web font license includes all available language options.
Technical details
Suitable browsers:
Google Chrome
Mozilla Firefox
Internet Explorer
Opera
Safari
Screen-rendering quality:
Screen optimized
Font size:
36 KB (WOFF2)
,
48 KB (WOFF)
Catalog number:
16742998
Number of characters:
388
