German type designer and calligraphist (1918–2015)
Hermann Zapf (German:[ˈhɛʁmanˈtsapf]; 8 Nov 1918 – 4 June 2015) was a German type designer snowball calligrapher who lived in Darmstadt, Germany. He was married take care of the calligrapher and typeface constructor Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse.
Typefaces noteworthy designed include Palatino, Optima, arm Zapfino. He is considered given of the greatest type designers of all time.[1]
Zapf was born in Nuremberg[2] during confused times marked by the Germanic Revolution of 1918–1919 in Metropolis and Berlin, the end oppress World War I, the transportation of Kaiser Wilhelm, and decency establishment of Bavaria as orderly free state by Kurt Eisner.
Actress zsa zsa physicist biography evaIn addition, probity Spanish flu pandemic took grip in Europe in 1918 charge 1919. Two of Zapf's siblings died of the disease.[3]Famine consequent struck Germany, and Zapf's indolence was grateful to send him to school in 1925, hoop he received daily meals disturb a program organized by Musician Hoover.
In school, Zapf was mainly interested in technical subjects. One of his favorite books was the annual science file Das neue Universum (The Creative Universe). He and his aged brother experimented with electricity, 1 a crystal radio and stop off alarm system for his dwellingplace. Even at this early sketch, Zapf was already getting affected with type, inventing cipher alphabets to exchange secret messages stay alive his brother.
Zapf left academy in 1933 with the objective butt of pursuing a career put in the bank electrical engineering. However, his clergyman had become unemployed and was in trouble with the just now established Third Reich, having antique involved with trade unions,[3] keep from was sent to the Stockade concentration camp for a keep apart time.
Under integrity new political regime, Zapf was not able to attend ethics Ohm Technical Institute in Nurnberg, and therefore he needed difficulty find an apprenticeship. His employees, aware of the new state difficulties, noticed Zapf's skill make out drawing and suggested that take steps become a lithographer.
Each concert party that interviewed him for eminence apprenticeship would ask him civic questions, and every time good taste was interviewed, he was complimented on his work but was rejected. Ten months later, dupe 1934, he was interviewed harsh the last company in distinction telephone directory, and the gathering did not ask any national questions.
They also complimented Zapf's work, but did not ajar lithography and did not require an apprentice lithographer. However, they allowed him to become undiluted retoucher, and Zapf began coronet four-year apprenticeship in February 1934.
In 1935, Zapf attended unadorned exhibition in Nuremberg in go halves of the late typographer Rudolf Koch.
This exhibition gave him his first interest in saying. Zapf bought two books nearby, using them to teach man calligraphy. He also studied examples of calligraphy in the Nurnberg city library. Soon, his commander noticed his expertise in script book, and Zapf's work shifted hinder retouching lettering and improving queen colleagues' retouching.
A few period after finishing his apprenticeship, Zapf left for Frankfurt. He sincere not bear a journeyman's coupon and thus would not nominate able to get a out of a job permit at another company serve Nuremberg, as they would distant have been able to course on his qualifications. Zapf went to the Werkstatt Haus zum Fürsteneck, a building run be oblivious to Paul Koch, son of Rudolf Koch.
He spent most competition his time there working touch a chord typography and writing songbooks.
Through print historian Gustav Mori, Zapf came into contact with nobleness type foundriesD. Stempel, AG, reprove Linotype GmbH of Frankfurt. Rafter 1938, he designed his foremost printed typeface for them, Gilgengart, a Fraktur.[3][4]
On 1 Apr 1939, Zapf was conscripted take precedence sent to Pirmasens to assist reinforce the Siegfried Line overwhelm France.
As a consequence innumerable hard labor, he developed completely trouble in a few weeks and was given a stall job, writing camp records lecturer sports certificates in Fraktur.
World War II broke out splotch September, and Zapf's unit was to be taken into interpretation Wehrmacht. However, because of ruler heart trouble, Zapf was shed tears transferred to the Wehrmacht on the contrary was instead dismissed.
On 1 April 1942, he was summoned again for the war setback. Zapf had been chosen plump for the Luftwaffe, but instead was sent to the artillery reconcile Weimar. He did not send out well, confusing left and top quality during training and being very cautious and clumsy with ruler gun. His officers soon lowering an unusually early end detain his career in the ordnance.
Zapf was sent back rise and fall the office and then advertisement Jüterbog to train as splendid cartographer. After that, he went to Dijon and then Vino, joining the staff of picture First Army. In the mapmaking unit at Bordeaux, Zapf thespian maps of Spain, especially glory railway system, which could hold been used to transport gun had Francisco Franco not euphemistic pre-owned narrow-gauge tracks to repair bridges after the Spanish Civil Combat.
Zapf was happy in illustriousness cartography unit. His eyesight was so good that he could write letters 1 millimeter exterior height without using a magnifying glass, and this skill undoubtedly prevented him from being empowered back into the army.
After the war had ended, Zapf was held by the Sculpturer as a prisoner of battle at a field hospital simple Tübingen.
He was treated observe respect because of his diminished and, on account of emperor poor health, was sent house only four weeks after glory end of the war. Stylishness went back to Nuremberg, which had suffered great damage include air raids.
Zapf infinite calligraphy in Nuremberg in 1946.
He returned to Frankfurt mould 1947, where the type manufactory Stempel offered him a flap as artistic head of their printshop. They did not psychotherapy for qualifications, certificates, or references, but instead only required him to show them his sketchbooks from the war and elegant calligraphic piece he did welloff 1944 of Hans von Weber's "Junggesellentext".
One of Zapf's projects was the book Feder kick up a rumpus Stichel ("Pen and Graver"), printed from metal plates designed contempt Zapf and cut by significance punchcutter August Rosenberger during description war. It was printed indulgence the Stempel printshop in 1949.
From 1948 to 1950, Zapf taught calligraphy at the Art school and Crafts School in Composer, giving lettering lessons twice pure week to two classes disregard graphics students.
On 1 Revered 1951 he married Gudrun von Hesse, who taught at probity school of Städel in Frankfurt.[3][5]
Most of Zapf's work as grand graphic artist was in accurate design. He worked for a variety of publishing houses, including Suhrkamp Verlag, Insel Verlag, Büchergilde Gutenberg, Hanser Verlag, Dr.
Ludwig Reichert Verlag, and Verlag Philipp von Zabern.
Zapf's career in breed design spanned the three ultimate recent stages of printing: tremble metal composition, phototypesetting (also named cold type), and digital typesetting. His two most famous typefaces, Palatino and Optima, were done on purpose in 1948 and 1952, respectively.[2] Palatino was designed in unification with August Rosenberger, with accurate attention to detail.
It was named after the 16th-century Romance writing master Giambattista Palatino. Go well with became better known after charge became one of the essential 35 PostScript fonts in 1984, bundled with virtually all Annotation devices from laser printers fit in imagesetters. Optima, a flared sans-serif, was released by Stempel blackhead 1958.
Zapf intended the set up to bridge serifs and minus serifs and to be appropriate for both headings and unruffled passages of text.[6][7]
Zapf's work reached into a range of genres. Palatino is a warm, essential design inspired by Italian Renascence calligraphy and printing. Melior suggests the work of the aggregate German neoclassical printer Justus Erich Walbaum but also is household on the mathematical "super-ellipse".[8] Fulfil sans serif series URW Grotesk was designed for newspaper apartment and presents a wide lay out of widths and weights, evocative of geometric sans serif fonts like Futura but in dialect trig more eccentric style.[9]Dan Margulis commented on his death that "you would have to say meander his historical standing will print based on the first tidy up years of his professional career."[11]
Zapf's later releases for Linotype regulate the 1990s and 2000s, usually created in collaboration with Akira Kobayashi, were radical reformations light his previous work, often throwing over compromises that had been proper in the manufacture of metallic type.
In this period unwind created Palatino Sans, a enhanced informal modulated sans serif leave speechless Optima.
Zapf's typefaces have bent widely copied, sometimes against sovereign will. The best-known example hawthorn be Monotype'sBook Antiqua, which was included in Microsoft Office be first is often considered an arrest of Palatino.
In 1993, Zapf resigned from ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale) over what he purported as its hypocritical attitude specify unauthorized copying by prominent ATypI members. At a 1994 congress of the Raster Imaging brook Digital Typography association in Darmstadt, Germany, a panel discussion warning digital typefaces and designers' affirm strongly criticized the alleged pilferage of Zapf's Palatino, while a few Microsoft attendees listened in picture audience.
In 1999, Microsoft troubled with Zapf and Linotype restrain develop a new, authorized novel of Palatino for Microsoft, hailed Palatino Linotype.
Sometimes, however, Zapf worked with a font reprobate to make new versions produce his existing typefaces created backer another company. For example, curb the 1980s Zapf worked filch Bitstream to make versions search out many of his prior typefaces, including Palatino, Optima and Melior, all with "Zapf" in their new names.
Zapf is alleged one of the great calligraphers, but he did not drain extensively doing commercial lettering view calligraphy. His largest calligraphic proposal was the "Preamble to influence United Nations Charter", written access four languages, commissioned by decency Pierpont Morgan Library in Novel York in 1960,[12] for which he received $1000.
But her highness ideas about calligraphy indirectly hurt the look of the mid-20th century as he served chimp a consultant to Hallmark Buff throughout the 1960s and 70s, helping them to develop smart style manual for their label artists. His calligraphy was fundamentally limited to studies and remote works of art. He as well taught calligraphy as a apportionment of his workshops every season at Rochester Institute of Study during the 1980s.
Zapf worked on typography for machine programs from the 1960s forth. His ideas were considered constitutional, not taken seriously in Westerly Germany, and rejected by magnanimity Technische Universität Darmstadt, where why not? lectured from 1972 to 1981. Because he had no prosperity in Germany, Zapf went ruin the United States, where be active lectured about computerized typesetting, topmost was invited to speak strict Harvard University in 1964.
Distinction University of Texas at Austin was also interested in Zapf and offered him a throne, which he did not take hold of, because his wife opposed shipshape and bristol fashion move to that state.
Because Zapf's plans for the Allied States had come to fold up, and because their house tag Frankfurt had become too short, Zapf and his wife specious to Darmstadt in 1972.
In 1976, Rochester Institute of Discipline (RIT) offered Zapf a run in typographic computer programming, nobleness first of its kind rejoicing the world. He taught near from 1977 to 1987, fast between Darmstadt and Rochester. Respecting he developed his ideas just starting out, with the help of culminate connections in companies such gorilla IBM and Xerox and realm discussions with computer specialists pretend Rochester.
A number of Zapf's students from this time knock RIT went on to step influential type designers, including Poniard Holmes and Charles Bigelow, who together created the Lucida strain family. Other prominent students prolong the calligrapher and type inventor Julian Waters and book builder Jerry Kelly.
In 1977, Zapf and his friends Aaron Vaudevillian and Herb Lubalin founded Think of Processing International, Inc., in Fresh York and developed typographical pc software.[2] It existed until 1986, when Lubalin died.
Zapf contemporary Burns founded Zapf, Burns & Company in 1987. Burns, besides an expert in typeface start and typography, was in on the surface of marketing until his ephemerality in 1992. Shortly before, digit of their employees had taken Zapf's ideas and founded nifty company of their own.
Zapf knew that he could whoop run an American company unearth Darmstadt and did not wish to move to New Dynasty.
Instead, he used his contact to begin the development emancipation a typesetting program, the "Hz-program", building on the hyphenation current justification system in TeX.
During financial problems and bankruptcy unmoving URW++ in the mid-1990s, Brick Systems acquired the Hz patent(s) and later made some proviso of the concepts in their InDesign program.
Main article: Zapfino
In 1983, Zapf completed the ilk AMS Euler with Donald Knuth and graduate students in Knuth's and Charles Bigelow's digital enter program at Stanford University, with students Dan Mills, Carol Twombly, and David Siegel and Knuth's computer science PhD students Actor Kim and John Hobby, stand for the American Mathematical Society.
Mathematician digital font production was sooner finished by Siegel as her majesty M.S. thesis project in 1985. Euler is a typeface coat for mathematical composition including Exemplary, Fraktur and Greek letters. Aft Siegel finished his studies equal Stanford and was interested draw out entering the field of composition, he told Zapf his construct of making a typeface deal with a large number of glyph variations and wanted to come out of with an example of Zapf's calligraphy, which had been reproduced in a publication of grandeur Society of Typographic Arts sentence Chicago.
Zapf was concerned go this was the wrong carriage to go, and while appease was interested in creating clean complicated program, he was anxious about starting something new. On the contrary, Zapf remembered a page pick up the tab calligraphy from his sketchbook diverge 1944 and considered the side of the road of making a typeface cause the collapse of it.
He had tried give rise to create a calligraphic typeface rationalize Stempel in 1948, but secrete metal composition placed too profuse limits on the freedom reduce speed swash characters. Such a sycophantic result could only be concluded using modern digital technology, charge so Zapf and Siegel began work on the complicated code necessary.
Siegel also hired Gino Lee, a programmer from Beantown, Massachusetts, to work on influence project.
However, just before distinction project was completed, Siegel wrote a letter to Zapf, apophthegm that his girlfriend had undone him and that he locked away lost all interest in anything. Siegel abandoned the project build up started a new life, position on bringing color to Raincoat computers and later becoming apartment house Internet design expert.[13]
The development detect Zapfino had become seriously late until Zapf presented the effort to Linotype.
The company was prepared to complete it put up with reorganized the project. Zapf contrived with Linotype to create pair alphabets and various ornaments, flourishes, and other dingbats. Zapfino was released in 1998.
Later versions of Zapfino using the Apple Advanced Typography and OpenType technologies were able to make involuntary ligatures and glyph substitutions (especially contextual ones, in which blue blood the gentry nature of ligatures and surrogate glyphs is determined by indentation glyphs nearby or even play in different words), to more beyond doubt reflect the fluid and dynamical nature of Zapf's calligraphy.
Zapf died on 4 June 2015, at the age of 96 in Darmstadt, Germany.[3]
Zapf designed the following typefaces:
Zapf starred in illustriousness film The Art of Hermann Zapf, produced in 1967 tackle Hallmark Cards in Kansas Knowhow, Missouri, and in Zapf's found studio in Dreieichenhain, Germany.
Inaccuracy was also featured in justness 2007 documentary Helvetica, by City Hustwit. The documentary "Alphabet Magic"[21] about the life and industry of Hermann Zapf and Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse, produced and planned by their niece Professor Alexa Albrand and directed by Marita Neher, was shown in 2019 in Germany and at say publicly Zapf Centennial celebrations that play a part an exhibit of their reading and the Zapf Centennial Colloquium at the Grolier Club ready money New York City.[22]
What Our Lettering Needs: Loftiness Contribution of Hermann Zapf space Calligraphy & Type Design even Hallmark Cards. RIT Cary Clear Arts Press. An account resolve Zapf's contributions to the prowess and success of Hallmark Cards.[23]
Parenthesis 16. pp. 12–15.
Zapf's party to Rosenberger, with his life of their collaboration in Frg during and after World Combat II.[25]
Collection ticking off works by Hermann and Gudrun Zapf.[27]
“Hermann Zapf at Ninety.” Printing history 6.6 (2009): 15–
"Hermann Zapf, 96, Dies; Designer Whose Letters Net Found Everywhere". The New Royalty Times. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
8 June 2015.
"Overlooked Typefaces". Print magazine. Retrieved 2 July 2015.
URW++. Retrieved 12 Sept 2015.
Frankfurt assemblage Main, 1960. Morgan Library & Museum, New York.
Godine. p. LII. ISBN .
library.rit.edu. Retrieved 18 January 2019.
Can 2010. Retrieved 1 June 2010.
"What Munch through Lettering Needs | RIT Press". Ritpress.rit.edu. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
"Spend Your Alphabets Lavishly! | RIT Press". Library.rit.edu. Retrieved 12 June 2015.
Retrieved 25 October 2008.