[comp.fonts] Optima, Zapf book

drstrip@intvax.UUCP (David R. Strip) (01/15/91)

Kathy Strong mentions:
Hermann Zapf and his design philosophy (Z250 A2 Z379 1987) (yes, he wrote it)

I have this at home (a bit pricey. more of a coffee table book than
reading), and seem to recall that it has a short essay on optima.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that optima was inspired by something
about superellipses. I thought this might have been in the metafont book, 
but can't seem to find it either in the section on superellipses, or on the
pages indexed under Zapf.

drstrip@cs.sandia.gov

mwang@oracle.com (Michael Wang) (01/22/91)

In article <3643@intvax.UUCP> drstrip@intvax.UUCP (David R. Strip) writes:
> I seem to recall reading somewhere that optima was inspired by something
> about superellipses. I thought this might have been in the metafont book,
> but can't seem to find it either in the section on superellipses, or on the
> pages indexed under Zapf.

Actually the typeface Hermann Zapf designed that was inspired by superellipses
is Melior. It is a text face that was designed to be readable under less than 
ideal printing conditions.


Michael Wang
mwang@oracle.com