History
Hermann Zapf was born in Nuremberg on November 9, 1918. At ten years old, his father, active in the trade unions, was taken to Dachau when the National Socialist Party came into power and brought down the unions. Due to his father’s political record, Hermann was not able to go in to the electrical trade as he had wished. In 1934 Hermann started as an apprentice lithographic retoucher.Inspired by seeing a Rudolf Koch calligraphy exhibition on 1935, Zapf began teaching himself calligraphy. Zapf’s new talent was noticed and through the D Stemple AG typefoundry in Frankfurt and in 1938 he designed his first typeface, a blackletter design called Gilgenart.
His love for calligraphy grew with time. Zapf went on to design several very now famous typefaces like Palatino and Optima, both of which are heavily influenced by his appreciation of calligraphy.
In 1948, Zapf designed a calligraphic script font – based on samples from his sketchbooks – call Virtuosa. He was disappointed with restrictions of designing the script font using metal plates. Zapf felt the kerning was wrong and the slant was too harsh. He intended for “exuberant flourishes” which the metal could not provide. In 1993, with the help of another typographer, David Siegel (Tekton) and programmer Gino Lee, began digitizing Zapf’s original script concept, calling it Zapfino. Zapfino, completed in 1998, finally realized Zapf’s original concept for his calligraphic font. The Zapfino fontset includes One, Two, Three, Four, Ligatures and Ornaments, and is essentially a complete digital calligraphic kit.
Visual Study
I use Zapfino when a client is looking for an “elegant” wedding invitation design. It is a clean and whispy font that has plenty of variations to avoid repetition that comes from using digital script fonts. The only complaint that I have is that (for some clients) the weight of the font is not heavy enough (i.e., there is no ‘Zapfino Bold’). When this is an issue, I outline the font and offset it by one or two pixels (depending on the font size being used), which typically satisfies the client and doesn’t detract from the design of font.
Sources
Dodd, Robin. From Gutenberg to opentype: an illustrated history of type from the earliest letterforms to the latest digital fonts. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 2006. Print.
"Download Zapfino® font family - Linotype.com." Download fonts from classic to cool - Linotype.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2012.
"Linotype Zapfino™ - Desktop font « MyFonts." MyFonts: Webfonts & Desktop Fonts. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2012.
"Virtuosa - Font News." Download fonts from classic to cool - Linotype.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2012.
"Zapfino - Fonts.com." Fonts.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2012.
"Zapfino - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2012.
Images used without permission:
http://naranho.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/zaph0.jpg
http://image.linotype.com/news/fontnews/virtuosaclassic/virtuosa_sample01.gif
http://origin.myfonts.net/116/fs/u/5b/3776da4b764dc34c897cd0fe66b7fb.gif
The reason I choose to write this post about Chunk (Five) – referred to in the rest of this post as 'CF' – is, I was working on a project for a colleague a few weeks ago and I had to download it for a design that I was given to edit. I became so enamored with the font that I decided to update my website logo using CF (see Goodarts dot Net, above). I was curious to se where CF came from and decided to spotlight the typeface in today's post. 
Helvetica was designed by Max Miedinger, Alfred and Edouard Hoffman in the mid 1950s. The three worked for the Haas typefoundery in Munchenstein, Switzerland. Their intent was to produce a competitive, new san-serif typeface. At the time Switzerland was known for its clean, high-end design. Miedinger, the lead designer on the font project, based his first designs on Schelter Grotesk, a popular sans-serif from the late 1800s. Helvetica was originally released in 1056 under the name Neue Haas Grotesk. Neue Hass wasn't very popular in Switzerland after its release because Swiss designers were very happy using Akzidenz-Grotesk.
renamed to the latin name for 'Swiss', Helvetica (the full latin name for Switzerland being 'Confoederatio Helvetica'). The reasoning behind the renaming was to encompass the world-renowned Swiss design style.
Modern, digital Helvetica has about 19 variations (regular, condensed, compressed, rounded, roman, narrow, etc.). It can be identified from other sans-serif fonts by its very round capitals in the 'C', 'G', 'O' and 'Q'. The terminals of the 'C', 'G', 'S', 'a', 'c', 'e', and 's' are horizontal, unlike Akzidenz which have terminals closer to 45 degrees.
