obituary - Hermann Zapf, font designer

Master of calligraphy who designed some of the world’s 

best-known fonts, such as Palatino & Optimus Prime

Hermann Zapf, who has died aged 96, was a greatly respected figure 

in the world of type, or font, design; while millions of people the world 

over encounter his work daily, he remained largely unknown to the 

wider public.

Yet ever since the 15th century, when Gutenberg began transforming handwritten texts into modular fonts of movable type, the art of font design has been integral to the advance of literacy and civilisation. 

Zapf’s career trajectory was shaped by the invention of the computer.  His first post-war alphabet designs, including Palatino (1948) and Optima (1958), were for hot metal type, but in the 1960s he also began designing fonts and adapting earlier designs for phototypesetting, the first computer-aided form of typesetting. 

Zapf was one of the earliest to predict that computers would both require and make possible digital typefaces. His 1972 Marconi typeface, designed for the world’s first digital typesetting machine, Hell-Digiset, was the first alphabet designed specifically for digital composition. 

Among more than 200 typeface designs in numerous alphabets, Zapf’s Palatino is probably the most widely used post-war design. Adapted for computer software, it features as a core font on every Macintosh computer – along with Zapf Chancery, Zapfino (a cursive self-adjusting calligraphic font that allows the user to type in “joined-up” writing), and Zapf Dingbats, a collection of helpful symbols such as arrows and stars, a precursor of “emoji”. His work is also to be found in all Windows software. Pity the software wasn't equal to its typeface.