Comes in both Serif and Sans Serif families.
Designed by: Erik Spiekermann, Ole Schäfer, Just van Rossum
Year: 1990
Country of Origin: Germany
Class: Sans Serif, Humanist Serif; Serif, Slab Serif
Officina started under the working title ITC Correspondence in 1988 and was designed for office documents and business correspondence produced on low-resolution (laser-)printers.
Inspired by the typewriter faces Letter Gothic and Courier Spiekermann began to work on the sans, also with an eye on the font he designed for the German Post (and later became FF Meta). His friend Gerard Unger offered to help with the seriffed version but had to go further with different projects after the first sketches for the testword »Hamburgefons«. The Sans was the narrow face, like Letter Gothic was the 12-pitch typewriter face (12 characters to an inch), while Courier was the 10-pitch one.
In 1989 Just van Rossum assisted in finishing the Sans and together with Spiekermann added the slab serif to the Sans. Unger’s Serif version remains a sketch. URW generated the font-data and added the rounded edges. When the proofs came from ITC in the summer of 1990, Spiekermann first was quite disappointed finding his discreet hanging figures changed into standard ones.
Originally, there were just the Regular and Bold weights with their Italics. Ole Schäfer added extra weights, some time in the mid-90s while still at college. He then joined Spiekermann’s design studio in Berlin, MetaDesign, where they also worked on various exclusive typefaces for companies and publishers. Ole’s FF Zine came out of one of those projects (for Leipziger Zeitung), as did some of Lucas de Groot’s fonts, who also worked at MetaDesign with Spiekermann.
Eventually, ITC added all the features like old style figures and small caps to the family.
Erik Spiekermann first conceived of the ITC OfficinaTM typeface design in the early 1980s. His goal was to create a family of type that was ideally suited for office correspondence and business documentation. ITC Officina soon revealed, however, that it had capabilities far beyond its original intention. The ITC Officina font clearly stood on its own as a highly legible, remarkably functional type style, Spiekermann’s ambitions for the design now extended beyond the office environment; he sought to develop a family of type suitable for a wide range of typographic applications. The ITC Officina font is a big family. Both the Serif and Sans Serif versions are available in five weights, each with corresponding italics. These twenty styles make for an exceptionally versatile communication tool. Proportionally, the Officina font’s design is slightly condensed to make it economical in its use of space. Counters are full and the serifs are strong enough to remain legible at small sizes – especially important when used on low-resolution output devices and lesser grades of paper stock. In 2001 Spiekermann added a volume of display faces to the ITC Officina family. The ITC Officina Display faces are slightly heavier and fit a little snugger than the text versions. Punctuation marks and the dots over the ‘i’ and ‘j’ were made smaller. A series of dingbats was even created for the new designs. Many additional, more subtle, changes were also made to the original design-all with the goal of making the Officina Display font an excellent communicator at large sizes. The ITC Officina font embodies all the qualities that a typeface Super Family should-it’s a strong design carried across a variety of weights, with an almost limitless number of uses.
Practicality and style –no, it’s not the perfect shoe, it’s ITC Officina. This large and incredibly versatile typeface family offers industrial-strength functionality without sacrificing charm. And it’s now available in OpenType format, too.
Erik Spiekermann once opined that, much as people look like their dogs, type designers look like their typefaces. “Adrian Frutiger is Swiss, religious, precise; Gerard Unger is thin, tall and economical,” he explained. His theory may be valid. Erik Spiekermann is an iconoclast, multi-talented, a great communicator, and almost always has a mischievous twinkle in his eye. One of his first type systems, ITC Officina, has all these traits – right down to the mischievous twinkle.
All kinds of versatility
When Erik Spiekermann first conceived of Officina during the early 1980s, his goal was to create a family of type that was ideally suited for office correspondence and business documentation. Midway through the design process, however, Officina revealed capabilities far beyond its original intention. Early tests showed that Officina could stand on its own as a highly legible, remarkably functional type style. Spiekermann“s ambitions for the design now extended beyond the office environment; he sought to develop a family of type suitable for a wide range of typographic applications.
Industrial strength, and style
ITC Officina is a big family. Both the Serif and Sans Serif versions are available in five weights, each with corresponding italics. These twenty styles make for an exceptionally versatile communication tool. Proportionally, the design is slightly condensed to make it economical in its use of space. Spiekermann also kept the counters full and serifs strong enough to withstand the rigors of small sizes, low resolution output devices, and lesser grades of paper stock.
The italics in the ITC Officina family are not merely obliques of the roman design. Instead, cursive overtones were incorporated, which provide both distinction and character legibility.
Other traits that give ITC Officina its “attitude” are the squared quality to normally curved strokes in characters like the “b,” “d,” and “g,” and the hint of a curve in what would typically be straight strokes in the lowercase “f” and “g.” ITC Officina“s immense practicality is delivered with style.
Now in OpenType format
ITC Officina Pro has been approved by Erik Spiekermann as a faithful extension of his work. The new fonts feature many OpenType capabilities, including the automatic insertion of old style figures, ligatures and small caps.
In addition to English, French, German, and other Western European languages, the OpenType fonts’ extended character set supports most Central and Eastern European languages.
gracieabrams
baratheonpilled
prguitarman
pixelskylines
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
tangentwithtanner
discoholicmusic