Oswald Cooper is best known for his emblematic Cooper Black™ typeface. Although he was responsible for several other fonts of roman design, Cooper never drew a sans serif typeface. But that didn’t stop George Ryan from creating one. Ryan saw a sans serif example of Cooper’s lettering in an old book and decided that it deserved to be made into a typeface. Ryan’s initial plan was to make a single-weight typeface that closely matched the slender and condensed proportions of the original lettering. While the resulting Oz Handicraft™ typeface proved to be very popular, Ryan was not satisfied with the limited offering. So, between other projects – and over many years – Ryan worked on expanding the design’s range. The completed family includes light, semi bold and bold weights to complement the original design, plus a matching suite of four “wide” designs, which are closer to normal proportions. Fonts of Oz Handicraft include a Pan-European character set that supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages.

Aldus was designed by Hermann Zapf and appeared with the font foundry D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt am Main in 1954. Zapf named this font after the famous Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, whose work is among the most important of the Renaissance period as well as Zapf’s inspiration for Aldus. Linotype Aldus was introduced by Linotype Library as a text font lighter than Palatino. Zapf’s goal with his Palatino and Aldus was to create a new form of Old Face typeface. This font gives text the feeling of elegance which was typical of the Renaissance.

Hermann Zapf made his first scetches for Orion in 1963. Zapf's aim was to create a neutral textface which can be ideally used as a newspaper face. Its strokethickness and open letterforms also fits well for book and magazine production. The final two weights of Orion were released in 1974 for the Linofilm photocomposing machine.

URW Grotesk was designed exclusively for URW by Prof. Hermann Zapf in 1985. At the same time, Zapf designed URW Antiqua to go with URW Grotesk. At that time, we were working with a large German publishing house (Axel Springer) on type design solutions to replace certain of their newspaper fonts. Test pages of large German newspapers (e.g. Bildzeitung) were printed with URW Grotesk and URW Antiqua font families. For reasons not disclosed to us, the project was dropped and Springer never used URW Grotesk and URW Antiqua for that purpose. Anyway, Zapf finished his designs and URW produced both families. Zapf’s intention for the two typefaces was to design two highly legible, open and classical fonts that could be used for any kind of typography, especially books, newspapers, magazines, etc. However, we realized later on, that URW Grotesk is very well suited for multi media applications on screen.

URW Grotesk was designed exclusively for URW by Prof. Hermann Zapf in 1985. At the same time, Zapf designed URW Antiqua to go with URW Grotesk. At that time, we were working with a large German publishing house (Axel Springer) on type design solutions to replace certain of their newspaper fonts. Test pages of large German newspapers (e.g. Bildzeitung) were printed with URW Grotesk and URW Antiqua font families. For reasons not disclosed to us, the project was dropped and Springer never used URW Grotesk and URW Antiqua for that purpose. Anyway, Zapf finished his designs and URW produced both families. Zapf's intention for the two typefaces was to design two highly legible, open and classical fonts that could be used for any kind of typography, especially books, newspapers, magazines, etc. However, we realized later on, that URW Grotesk is very well suited for multi media applications on screen.

Michelangelo was designed by Hermann Zapf in 1950.

Palatino is the work of Hermann Zapf and became available in the late 1950s from D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt am Main. Zapf optimized Palatino’s design for legibility, producing a typeface which remained legible even on the inferior paper of the post World War II period. Zapf named the font after Giambattista Palatino, a master of scripts from the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Palatino is an Old Face font which proves that classic forms can still be used to create new typefaces.

Marconi was created by Hermann Zapf in 1973. According to Gerard Unger, it was the world's first digital typeface. 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 — looks more like 9 1/2 points. 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.

Alige is a humanist sans serif typefaces made for body text and display. Carried classic roman proportion in higher letterform for better reading experence. Inspired by Optima Nova which designed by Hermann Zaph in early 50's, alige contains 28 cuts which 14 style in text and 14 in display. Kindly visit Alige Playground for more detail presentation.

Palatino Arabic is a collaboration between Lebanese designer Nadine Chahine and Prof. Hermann Zapf. The design is based on the Al-Ahram typeface designed by Zapf in 1956 but reworked and modified to fit the Palatino nova family. The design is Naskh in style but with a strong influence of the Thuluth style as well. This is evident in the swash-like finials and the wide proportions of the letterforms. It is designed for use in print in both large and small sizes. The counters are wide open to allow for better readability in small sizes as well as to maintain an open and friendly appearance. The font has 1091 glyphs and includes a large number of extra ligatures and stylistic alternates as well as the basic Latin part of Palatino nova and support for Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. It also includes proportional and tabular numerals for the supported languages. Palatino Arabic wins Type Directors Club award. Each year, the New York-based Type Directors Club judges typeface designs from all over the world in their TDC2 contest. Linotype is pleased to announce that a very new typeface of its own is among 2008’s winners: Palatino Arabic. A collaboration between Nadine Chahine and Prof. Hermann Zapf, this face is an extension of Zapf’s Al-Ahram Arabic type from 1956 recreated to join the Palatino nova family.

Diotima was designed by Gudrun Zapf von Hesse in 1948, the italic even earlier, in 1939. Diotima is a festive font particularly well-suited to invitations, programs and poems. The delicate italic draws attention to text which should be emphasized. Zapf von Hesse’s Ariadne Initials and Smaragd are perfect complements to Diotima.

Colombine is based on the handwriting of Gudrun Zapf von Hesse. The dynamic forms of Gudrun Zapf von Hesse's Colombine express the dance, the lightheartedness and the liveliness of Commedia dell'Arte. The type is an excellent choice for artistic as well as festive applications. The different weights make Colombine perfect for certificates and other celebratory texts.

Drawn by master German calligrapher Hermann Zapf in the 1970s, Noris Script captures the magic of the irregularities of pen strokes. The idea behind Noris Script was to bring the spontaneity of a quick handwritten script using a broad-edged pen into the modern typesetting environment. Noris is the Latin name for the German city of Nuremberg, where Hermann Zapf was born and raised. Nuremberg has something special about it, aside from Hermann Zapf, it has a great tradition of writing masters, such as Johann Neudörffer (1497-1563), Wolfgang Fugger (1515-1568), and Rudolf Koch (1876-1934).

Sandena began as an attempt at a harmonic convergence between the classic lines of Palatino and the curved flair of Optima - both favorites of mine from the great Hermann Zapf. As I’ve always loved the Swash characters of the 50’s and 60’s letterforms, I incorporated these alternatives to offer the more complete package that you see here - a humanist font in the truest calligraphic sense. This OpenType font family comes in four weights and includes condensed and Swash Cap alternates. Sandena offers multiple-character foreign language support and is being offered in a number of packages best-tailored for your unique application.

Virtuosa Classicis the 21st century OpenType re-release of a classic Hermann Zapf design, his very first script typeface, Virtuosa. Based on the same sketches that would inspire Zapfino 50 years later, Hermann Zapf developed Virtuosa in 1948-49. It was originally released in metal in 1952. Virtuosa nova is an English copperplate script with character. The font includes two form variants for each capital letter, and there are a number of lowercase alternates and ligatures, too.

Beatrix Antiqua is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Francesco Canovaro. Beatrix Antiqua is part of the Beatrix Family that takes its inspiration from the classic Roman monumental capital model: its capitals are directly derived from the stone carvings in Florence Santa Croce Cathedral - where the serifs are often removed while keeping the variable width strokes. So, even if it’s basically a sans-serif, Beatrix keeps a subtle swelling at the terminals suggesting a glyphic serif - in the same vein as Herman Zapf classic Optima typeface. In the lowercase design, Beatrix references early humanist typefaces, keeping small calligraphic details (as the prolongation of the e nose) that are especially visible in the italics. While Beatrix Antiqua, the companion typeface to Florentia , slightly exaggerates its antique stylistical features, Florentia tries to mix those influence with a more robust & digital age ready design, featuring bigger X-height and an extended character set that covers over forty languages using the latin alphabet, as well as Greek and Russian Cyrillic.

Opal Bulgarian is a humanistic sans serif typeface of a modern type, inspired by the famous Optima typeface (designed by Hermann Zapf). Opal Bulgarian consists of 2 weights and corresponding italics. Opal Bulgarian is suitable for body texts; for titles; for corporate identity. Opal Bulgarian continues the design of Opal BulgarianCYR, designed in 1992 by Zhivko Stankulov. In compare to Opal BulgarianCYR the new font family Opal Bulgarian has more glyphs and cover more languages. A number of shortcomings in the construction of the glyphs have been eliminated, and the design as a whole has been updated. Opal Bulgarian is available with active support and upgradeability. Licensees will receive all new versions of the font free of charge.

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."

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.