Born in Nuremberg in 1918, Herman Zapf during his school years was interested in technical subjects. Started his career as a photo retoucher than later lettering retoucher. From Nuremberg he moves to Frankfurt, where he spends most of his time in typography and song book writing. During this time, Zapf's developed heart problem resulted in loosing his position. after the war broke out, he joint the army. Due to his incapability, his career in the artillery ended shortly. he found happiness working in the cartography, drawing maps for Spain. after the war, Zapf turned back to Nuremberg where he gave some lessons. In 1947, however, a position in a printshop was offered, so he moves back to Frankfurt. Zapf is responsible for developing different printing types like: Palatino, Antigua and Optima. Zapf claims that he witnessed all stages of type procedures and he was also working on using typography in computer programs.
In 1977 he founded "Design Processing International Inc., which later become "Zapf Burns & Company." Unfortunately the company did not last for a long period of time. Developing the type Zapfino took a long time and effort, but finally Lynotype helped with the finishing.
"I did it especially to offer something more useful, compared to the many bad alphabets pushed on the market by designers in the last [few] years, who have no idea at all about good forms of calligraphy,"Zapf said about the Zapfino.
Zapf work resulted in more than 200 typefaces known today. The most popular types are: Palatino, Optima, ITC Zapf Chancery Italic, Michelangelo, Zapf International and Zapf Renaissance.
"In spite of mechanization and rationalization, it will be our task as book artists and alphabet designers, together with the technicians, to maintain the artistic aspects for progress in the evolution of printing"(Hermann Zapf).
Shaw, P. Zapfino. Print (New York, N.Y.) v. 53 no. 5 (September/October 1999) p. 68+
http://download.linotype.com/free/howtouse/ZapfBiography.pdf
http://www.identifont.com/show?14C
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