Optima Font

Optima is a sans serif font family by Hermann Zapf. Most typefaces are bold and aesthetic either by design or by their personality, and this comes at the cost of readability and flexibility. Not so the Optima® family. Thus it is exceptional and yet comprehensively covers virtually all projects or imaging conditions which may exist. Optima can be found on the sans-serif list most of the time, but it must be treated as a serifless Roman typeface. Being a Roman-era architecture-inspired design, Optima has ample, bold characters, especially in its Capitals. Of the latter, E, F and L are slightly different with narrow forms.

In a similar manner to other Zapf designs, the capital ‘S’ in Optima looks somewhat top-oriented with a mild rightward inclination. The M is spread out and the N is designed with light vertical lines just like a serif font. Optima’s lowercase a and g are high-legibility two-storied characters. Optima can be adjusted to a number of different line spacing options – quite tight on the one hand and quite loose on the other. In fact, there are very few limits to the amount of white space that can be inserted between lines of text. Optima is also able to achieve a great deal of flexibility in terms of letter spacing.

Features

It can be quite closed off, or even just barely open – especially when it comes to the capitals. If there are any guidelines, Optima should be set more open than tight for example. It is not that readability is impaired severely when Optima is set on the snug side; it is just that the natural grace and the pale greyish tint of the typeface are spoiled when letters are set too close. Optima is also as talkative as a typeface can get, almost. It can be easily combined with almost any serif type and, unexpected as it may sound, with a great number of sans serif fonts.

Optima is a typeface with six weights, ranging from Roman to extra black and has italics. Furthermore, the family is also offered in OpenType® Pro format, which includes small cap features, ligatures and alternate characters and also extends character support to the Central and Eastern European languages. When you’re ready to find its perfect pairing, browse these fantastic matches: It includes Monotype Century Old Style™, Dante®, Frutiger® Serif, Joanna® Nova, Malabar™ and Soho®.