Typophile

Old Italian Sanserif Examples

Joao Henrique Lopes

Hello, Friends.

I'm a Brazilian designer looking for old examples os latin sanserif letters. Above is the only example I´ve found, used for Optima. Does anyone have more pictures?

I am specially curious about the faces pointed in these lines:

"Perhaps it is no more than an accident of history that the unserifed letters of the fifteenth century Florentine architects and sculptors were not translated into metal type in the 1470s." - Bringhurst, Elements of Typographic Style.

I have already searched for Brunelleschi's and some other architects' handwriting, without success.

Thanks for any help!

Jeansou.

Ten years ago, Paul Shaw & Garrett Boge made a series of digital fonts based on Renaissance all-capitals inscription lettering styles.

The Optima lower case based on that inscription was Herman Zapf's invention to harmonize with the upper case—which he also modified from that model, which inspired him.

A lower case of flared sans that I also like a lot is Mentor Sans.

Yes, Optima has the best uppercase, but Mentor Sans has a better lowercase.
I am designing a font in that category...

Captured from web.archive.org on 17 Oct 2013. view this capture