Optima A New Antique – brochure, Cooper & Beatty, Tony Mann, 1963

A brochure for Hermann Zapf’s Optima typeface that was designed and produced in early 1963, when Tony Mann was just beginning work on the new Cooper & Beatty visual identity program. The soft green on the cover may have been one of the colours Mann considered before ultimately selecting the vivid orange that would become synonymous with C&B. He also tried various shades of green and blue for different divisions, but their application appears to have been inconsistent and was dropped. This particular copy, sent to Mono Lino, is date-stamped June 4, 1963 – a standard practice for incoming correspondence at the time.

Mann’s layout demonstrates Optima’s versatility, showcasing it as both a refined text face and a commanding display type. Zapf had originally named the face New Antique – a reference to its Roman monumental letterforms, which predate the German Blackletter, and explains why in Germany, Roman typefaces are referred to as Antiqua. On the cover Mann could not resist having a bit of fun with the obvious English wordplay; a new antique.

Optima’s design was truly groundbreaking – although clearly derived from classic Roman letterforms, like Trajan, Zapf developed it as a humanist sans serif, a move that puzzled many designers at first. Although it took time to gain acceptance, Optima would eventually be recognized as a landmark achievement in 20th-century type design. – Rod McDonald

Artifact Text

A unique sans-serif of classic form designed by Hermann Zapf Optima A New Antique