Sistina, designed by Hermann Zapf in 1950 was first named Aurelia Titling. It is a heavy supplement to the Michelangelo Titling based on studies of inscriptions in Rome. First release in hotmetal at D. Stempel AG, Frankfurt in 1951. Sistina was originally an all caps font. The digital version from Linotype contains small caps. Hermann Zapf together with Akira Kobayashi, type director from Linotype had made a new revised version of Sistina now named as Palatino Imperial" in the Palatino nova type family, a Platinum Collection product from Linotype."

Absinthe explores forms based on a truncated ellipse and eschews straight lines to give an entirely modern take on some of the forms more closely associated with Art Nouveau.

A typewriter style slab serif typeface. The design is influenced by the font Rockwell and uses a combination of precise geometry with subtle elliptical curves. The harmony of these elements creates a distinctive and functional typeface suitable for a variety of graphic design applications. Details include 4 weights, a complete character set, manually edited kerning and Euro symbol.

Venture Script reflects Hermann Zapf's handwriting. It was originally written with a Japanese feltpen. And like with Zapf's typeface Noris Script he wanted to preserve the rough outline of the handwritten form in the final drawings.

Vario is a bold brush-based design. Created by the renowned type designer and calligrapher, Hermann Zapf, Vario offers superb emphasis for use in headlines and displays. It is availble in both regular and italic styles. Vario was first produced in 1982.

Smaragd is a light and gracious font especially appropriate for titles and cards. It is Gudrun Zapf von Hesse’s interpretation of Baroque adornment engravings. Smaragd is clear and festive, well-suited to titles and headings, initials and private printed materials, such as cards and stationery.

ITC Slimbach font is the work of California calligrapher and type designer Robert Slimbach. Inspired in part by German fonts and the work of Hermann Zapf, Slimbach created a "contemporary text font with a progressive look", combining clean serif shapes with the warmth of calligraphic forms.

This font is a collection of simple calligraphic ornaments suitable for invitations, gift tags, and anything that can benifit from a "spoonful of sugar" visually. The frames font uses the same calligraphic elements as PR-Swirlies-01, but has them combines in ways which form an elliptical cartouche. Many of the elements can be used in a modular way to create frames of varying length.

Gudrun Zapf von Hesse designed the first sketches of Alcuin in 1986. The namesake of this typeface was an advisor of Charlemagne and was responsible for the writing reform of the Carolingian era. Alcuin was born in 735 in England, became an abbot in Tours and died there in 804. It was the idea of Zapf von Hesse to develop a modern text type based on the forms of the Carolingian minuscule. To create a text type that is excellent for a wide variety of applications, typical handwritten elements had to be discarded while still retaining the flow and character of handwriting. Alcuin with its strong calligraphic expression may be used in books, magazines, and also in the area of printed office communication.

Diotima Classic is a total upheaval for the 21st century of Gudrun Zapf von Hesse's mid-20th-century Diotima, one of the most beautiful types ever cast in metal. Its roots lay in a calligraphic sheet written by Gudrun Zapf von Hesse. The text was the Hyperion to Diotima" by Friedrich Hölderlin; Diotima is the name of a Greek priestess in Plato's dialogue about love. In the philosopher's imagination, she should appear slim and beautiful. In 1948, Gudrun Zapf von Hesse finished the typeface's Roman. The Diotima family was released as a metal typeface for hand setting by D. Stempel AG in 1951-53. This original Diotima is a festive design particularly suited to invitations, programs, and poems. The delicate Italic drew attention to text passages that should be emphasized. Linotype's previous digital Diotima only had one weight, which looked great in display sizes, but was too thin for text setting. Diotima Classic has four weights. The new Regular has more robust serifs and thicker hairlines, making it more appropriate for text sizes. The Diotima variation with finer serif remains under the name Light. Gudrun Zapf von Hesse also took the opportunity in 2008 to add an extremely heavy weight to the family. In comparison to the old Diotima, letterforms of the Diotima Classic are more harmonious and balanced. The rhythm of the Italic letters in Diotima Classic is more consistent. The lining figures of the Diotima Classic align with caps, and the letter spacing of the tabular lining figures in Diotima Classic is significantly better. The forms of the figures have been improved as well."

Thick horizontals reminiscent of certain Egyptian or western-themed display faces warp into stretched-out glyphs and strange elliptical forms in this haphazard, page-filling font. Sure to evoke images of saturday morning cartoons, zany retro advertisements, and various other expressions of mid-20th century whimsy . Comes packaged in both TrueType and OpenType formats with standard complement of alpha-numeric glyphs, punctuation marks, mathematical symbols, and European diacritics.

ITC Veljovic Script was designed by Jovica Veljovic and displays an obvious calligraphic heritage. The designer was strongly influenced by German designer Hermann Zapf and Israeli designer Henri Friedlander. ITC Veljovic Script exhibits a crisp precision, as if the letters were cut in stone rather than drawn with pen and ink.

Francker is a sans-serif, based on clean and simple design principles that betray its Danish origin. Its curves are based on the “super ellipse”, a mathematical shape about half-way between an ellipse and a rectangle. Francker’s lowercase lettershapes a, b, n, and u, have no spurs, emphasizing the simplicity of their construction. The Francker family is available in two widths, normal and condensed, each in nine weights, from extra light to extra black. Use Francker for signage, posters, magazines, advertisements, or corporate identity projects—wherever an industrial, contemporary look is needed. The Francker type was developed and designed by Anders Francker, an engineer and designer living in Denmark.

Zapfino Arabic is designed by Nadine Chahine as the Arabic companion to Hermann Zapf’s iconic Zapfino typeface, with the approval of Prof. Zapf. The design is an evolution of Arabic calligraphic traditions that combines Naskh and Nastaaliq to form a backward slanted calligraphic style. The character proportions refer to Naskh traditions but the isolated and final forms bring with them an exaggerated swash-like movement that references the extravagant ascenders and descenders of Zapfino. The font contains a large number of contextual variants that work to create a smooth flow of pen movement, as well as 10 stylistic sets. The character set supports the Arabic language as well as basic Latin. Zapfino Arabic is meant to be used as a display typeface, for logos, greeting cards and short headlines. It could also work for short pieces of text, for poetry or chapter introductions, when used in a generous type size and with ample space around it. Its design is soft and elegant, and leaves a lot of room for typographic playfulness.

Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashi redeveloped Palatino for the 21st Century, creating Palatino nova. The Palatino nova family also includes revised versions of Aldus (now called Aldus nova). A bold weight is added into the font family. The character set support is similar to Palatino nova, but Greek and Cyrillic are not available in book weight fonts.

Gaius is a beautiful script face with a nice relationship between the broad-edged pen and the proportions of the letterforms. It is very flexible and gives a personal touch due to its various alternate fonts with swash beginners, ending and ligature letterforms. Like Zapfino from Hermann Zapf, Gaius offers a great variety and makes the text more personal and readable.

Today's digital font technology has allowed renowned font designer and calligrapher Hermann Zapf to realize a dream he first had more than fifty years ago: to create a typeface that would come very close to the freedom and liveliness of beautiful handwriting. The basic Zapfino font family, released in 1998, consists of four alphabets with many additional stylistic alternates that can be freely mixed together to emulate the variations in handwritten text. In 2003, Zapf completed Zapfino Extra, a large expansion of the Zapfino family. Designed in collaboration with Akira Kobayashi, Zapfino Extra has a cornucopia of new characters. It includes exuberant hyper-flourishes, elegant small caps, dozens of ornaments, more alternates and ligatures, index characters, and a very useful "forte" (bold) version. Use Zapfino to produce unusual and graceful advertisements, packaging, and invitations. Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos, Best Fonts for Tattoos

Roundabout is a typeface that is extracted from an ellipse shape. Each and every character started at the same geometrical figure. By cutting it up in sections, twist and rotate the separate characters could be build. The ellipse provides this typeface with evident and smooth looking features. The name Roundabout is misleading, an ellipse is not round. But the word Roundabout has a nice ring to it and it seems to fit this typeface perfectly. The Roundabout as we know it is a place where the traffic circles. Sometimes in the greater metropoles it jams like clotting veins. Various exits are presented for those who know which way to go, for those who don’t it seems an eternal treadmill. Unlike my typeface, that seems rather careless, light weighted and knows her way around. A roundabout in a child’s mind is a playful carrousel or a merry go round. Merry go round has the sweetest sound and a match is found. My Roundabout is a joyful, optimistic and open typeface, which can be used over and over and over again for many or any purposes. ----- Roundabout ist eine Schrift die aus der Form einer Ellipse entstand. So teilen alle einzelnen Zeichen denselben geometrischen Ursprung. Durch das zerteilen, verdrehen und verflechten der elliptischen Grundform konnten die separaten Zeichen so geformt werden, dass sie einen klaren und weichen Charakter erhielten. Der Name Roundabout scheint auf den ersten Blick etwas irreleitend - ist eine Ellipse ja nicht wirklich rund. Er hat aber einen schönen Klang und doch eine tiefe Verbindung zu dieser Schrift. In unseren Gedanken ist Roundabout ein Kreisverkehr: Manchmal, in großen Städten, kann er blockieren, so wie eine verstopfte Ader. Verschiedenste Auswege zeigen sich denen, die ihr Ziel kennen; für alle anderen erscheint dieser Ort wie eine endlose Schlaufe. Dieses Bild widerspricht dem Auftreten meiner Schrift, welche eher sorglos und leichtfüßig ist; sie kennt ihren Weg. In dem Kopf eines Kindes jedoch ist ein Roundabout ein verspieltes Karussell, ein „merry go round“. ,,Merry go round“ klingt bezaubernd und so fiel die Entscheidung. Meine Roundabout ist eine fröhliche, optimistische und offene Schrift, die immer und immer wieder genutzt werden kann, zu jedem erdenklichen Zweck.

Palatino® Nova is Prof. Hermann Zapf's redesign of his own masterpiece, Palatino. The original Palatino was cut in metal by August Rosenberger at D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt, and released in 1950. Palatino was later adapted for mechanical composition on the Linotype machine, and became one of the most-used typefaces of the 20th Century. Palatino was designed for legibility, and has open counters and carefully weighted strokes. The type was named after Giambattista Palatino, a master of calligraphy from the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Palatino is a typeface based on classical Italian Renaissance forms. A modern classic in its own right, Palatino is popular among professional graphic designers and amateurs alike, working well for both text and display typography. Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashi redeveloped Palatino for the 21st Century, creating Palatino Nova. Released by Linotype in 2005, the Palatino Nova family is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Palatino Nova includes several weights (Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold), each with companion italics. Four styles (Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic) have Greek and Cyrillic glyphs built into their character sets. The Palatino Nova family also includes revised versions of Aldus (now called Aldus Nova), as well as two titling weights. The first titling weight, Palatino Nova Titling, is based on Hermann Zapf's metal typeface Michelangelo, including Greek glyphs from Phidias Greek. The heavier titling weight, Palatino Nova Imperial, is based on Sistina. The fonts in the Palatino Nova family support all 48 Western, Central, and Eastern European languages. Additional features: ligatures and historical ligatures, Small Caps, ornaments, and a range of numerals (proportional & tabular width lining and Old style Figures, fractions, inferiors, and superiors)."

Palatino® Nova is Prof. Hermann Zapf's redesign of his own masterpiece, Palatino. The original Palatino was cut in metal by August Rosenberger at D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt, and released in 1950. Palatino was later adapted for mechanical composition on the Linotype machine, and became one of the most-used typefaces of the 20th Century. Palatino was designed for legibility, and has open counters and carefully weighted strokes. The type was named after Giambattista Palatino, a master of calligraphy from the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Palatino is a typeface based on classical Italian Renaissance forms. A modern classic in its own right, Palatino is popular among professional graphic designers and amateurs alike, working well for both text and display typography. Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashi redeveloped Palatino for the 21st Century, creating Palatino Nova. Released by Linotype in 2005, the Palatino Nova family is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Palatino Nova includes several weights (Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold), each with companion italics. Four styles (Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic) have Greek and Cyrillic glyphs built into their character sets. The Palatino Nova family also includes revised versions of Aldus (now called Aldus Nova), as well as two titling weights. The first titling weight, Palatino Nova Titling, is based on Hermann Zapf's metal typeface Michelangelo, including Greek glyphs from Phidias Greek. The heavier titling weight, Palatino Nova Imperial, is based on Sistina. The fonts in the Palatino Nova family support all 48 Western, Central, and Eastern European languages. Additional features: ligatures and historical ligatures, Small Caps, ornaments, and a range of numerals (proportional & tabular width lining and Old style Figures, fractions, inferiors, and superiors)."

The PARATYPE library is our latest major addition, consisting of more than 370 typefaces. In the spirit of the perestroika changes and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a group of Russian type designers quit the state-owned Polygraphmash foundry to establish ParaType, the first, and now largest Russian digital type foundry. The ParaType team under the supervision of Vladimir Yefimov creates new typefaces and explores the Russian typographic heritage by making digital versions of existing Russian designs: these include the hits of Soviet typography such as Literaturnaya and Journal Sans. Most ParaType fonts are available in Western/Roman, Central European, Turkish and Cyrillic encodings. The Russian constructivist and avant garde movements of the early 20th century inspired many ParaType typefaces, including Rodchenko, Quadrat Grotesk, Ariergard, Unovis, Tauern, Dublon and Stroganov. The ParaType library also includes many excellent book and newspaper typefaces such as Octava, Lazurski, Bannikova, Neva or Petersburg. On the other hand, if you need a pretty face to knock your clients dead, meet the ParaType girls: Tatiana, Betina, Hortensia, Irina, Liana, Nataliscript, Nina, Olga and Vesna (also check Zhikharev who is not a girl but still very pretty). ParaType excels in adding Cyrillic characters to existing Latin typefaces — if your company is ever going to do business with Eastern Europe, we recommend you make them part of your corporate identity! ParaType created CE and Cyrillic versions of popular typefaces licensed from other foundries, including Bell Gothic, Caslon, English 157, Futura, Original Garamond, Gothic 725, Humanist 531, Kis, Raleigh, or Zapf Elliptical 711.

From alphabets created for book illustrations in the 1970s to lettering created for a book jacket in the 1990s, the Mentor family of typefaces has developed along its own slow and circuitous path. Always present in its evolution, though, has been the influence of three 20th century design giants: Eric Gill, Reynolds Stone, and Hermann Zapf, as filtered through the meticulous sensibility of Michael Harvey.

ITC Veljovic was designed by Jovica Veljovic and displays an obvious calligraphic heritage. The designer was strongly influenced by German designer Hermann Zapf and Israeli designer Henri Friedlander. ITC Veljovic exhibits a crisp precision, as if the letters were cut in stone rather than drawn with pen and ink. In 2014 Veljovic revised this family and ITC New Veljovic was released with many more weights and styles

Francker is a sans-serif typeface family based on clean and simple principles of design. The letterforms' curves are inspired by the "super ellipse," a mathematical shape that is about halfway between an ellipse and a rectangle. Francker's lowercase letters appear somewhat reduced, as the a, b, n and u have no spurs. The family is available in nine weights, from Extra Light to Extra Black. Excellent areas of use for Francker signage, posters, magazines, advertisements, or logos; wherever a timeless, modern look is needed. Francker's fonts have a large character set that includes all glyphs in Linotype's W1G specification (World Glyph Set 1). Proportional figures are available as alternatives to the tabular defaults, via an OpenType feature. The Francker type was developed designed by Anders Francker (b. 1972), an engineer and designer living in Denmark.

Cooper Black The Cooper Black font should be used in display sizes only. Cooper Blacks serifs are rounded and the counters are small. Cooper Black was designed by Oswald B. Cooper for Barnhart Brothers & Spindler in 1921 for advertising and posters. The capital O and Q of the Cooper Black font are tilted back; in the lowercase, the dot on the I and j become elliptical. The extra bold Cooper Black font has a remarkable personality and reproduces well in sizes over 18 point in titles, subheadings and generally short sentences.

CamingoDos is characterised by tight shapes, elliptical curves, subtle contrast and a strong, humanistic appearance: attributes that were all applied with particular care and attention for legibility. It comes in a wide range of seven weights from ExtraLight to Black which makes it perfectly suitable for editorial and corporate design. Furthermore it now has two additional related families: CamingoDos SemiCondensed and CamingoDos Condensed. CamingoDos comes with a Pro version that offers a rich set of expert typographic features like small caps, ligatures, stylistic alternates, different figure sets, arrows, fractions and ordinals.

Hermann Zapf’s Melior exhibits a robust character through classic and objective forms. Versatile and extremely legible, it can be used for a variety of texts and point sizes.

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.

A sturdy and solid presence, CamingoSlab is defined by its heavy serifs, low stroke contrast and elliptic curves. Yet it retains a light touch, and feels vivid and friendly, thanks to the humanistic tone that derives more from handwriting than from strict construction. Special attention has been paid to compatibility with the other members of the Camingo series — With their consistent line heights, an equal grey value and the same formal language it can be seamlessly combined with CamingoDos and CamingoMono. CamingoSlab comes with a Pro version that contains small caps, ligatures, 10 different figure sets, stylistic alternates and two sets of arrows.

Elliptical The squareness of curves. That was the elliptical – in more than one sense – notion being explored in the making of FS Hackney. The squareness of curves and vertical terminals to create a gentle, soft sans serif, with a little bit of magic. A momentary thought – “It doesn’t have to be like this” – provided the spur to explore the verticals and skeletons of letterforms beyond conventional type design limits. A 12-month gestation period gave rise to a font with a larger-than-usual character set, including non-lining figures, small caps and superior and inferior numbers. It’s a collection that speaks confidently for itself. Assertive It was the Hackney carriage – the black London cab – that gave this font its name, not the north London neighbourhood. Solid, dependable, effective and built to last, FS Hackney was honed to perform in all conditions. Cool, compelling lines and a satisfying overall simplicity lend FS Hackney its assertive air. Assured, versatile and effective; just like a black cab (but without the grumbling). Machined Over a string of meetings, Jason Smith and FS Hackney designer Nick Job worked out how to infuse Nick’s sketched letterforms with Fontsmith’s familiar geniality. “Nick is very meticulous and produces very clean design work,” says Jason. “Hackney is ideal for branding as it’s very clear and its quirks are sensible ones, not odd ones, that don’t distract from the message.”

Ovaltown is a geometric font family with three weights in which the letters are derived from ovals or ellipses. It does to have true lower-case letters but many of the characters in the lower-case slots differ from the corresponding characters in the upper-case slots. Ovaltown is strange, unusual, and bizarre and can be useful when one wants strange, unusual, and bizarre lettering.

Inspired by a former Hermann Zapf design, Hanse Textura was completely redrawn and redesigned as an English-style blackletter font with a calligraphic touch. It comes also with the historical long s which can be reached either by typing [alt] + b or by using the OT feature historical forms. I strongly recommend to activate both OT features, standard and discretionary, to access all ligatures built in the font. The keys pi and product are occupied with beautiful border elements.

An original design by Richard Isbell for ATF; in exaggerating the tapered stroke introduced eleven years earlier in Hermann Zapf’s Optima, Isbell created the first flareserif to achieve popularity in the United States.

Alight Slab is, wait for it... A light slab! Designed to be set large, in headlines or subheads and (very) short paragraphs of running text. It has slightly super-eliptical forms and crisp details, giving it a contemporary look. Alight Slab features automatic fractions, a discretionary ct ligature, and a capital sharp s. Anultra Slab is an ultra bold accompanying typeface.

Modeled from a set of individual painting stencils, Mess Hall JNL is named for the armed services cafeteria where thousands of enlisted men endured bland, boring meals day in and day out for years.

Alinea is a typeface in 3 styles (Sans, Incise, and Serif) conceived for being mixed in the same document. Alinea incise is a flare serif (incise in French). It finds its origin in the roman letters carved in stone. The great advantage of such a style is that it can be associated to any other style of typeface. The most famous flare serifs are: Optima of Hermann Zapf, Pascal of José Mendoza, Amerigo of Gerard Unger and Alinea Incise of course!

Inspired by some handwritten letter forms originally made by Hermann Zapf for his 1949 book "Pen and Graver", the drawings and designs finally became an entire font. It is an ideal companion to create diplomas, certificates and any other vintage projects. Take advantage of the long s which can be reached when you change the round s by the historical OpenType feature or when you simply type the integral sign [ ∫]. This font contains also swash forms of d, g, and v.