With the clear, simple elegance of its sans serif forms and the warmly human touches of its tapering stems, the Optima family has proved popular around the world.

In 2002, when it was finally possible to produce digital alphabets without technical limitations and compromises, and more than fifty years after the first sketches, an expansion and redesign of the Optima family was completed and released as Optima Nova. Hermann Zapf and Japanese type designer, Akira Kobayashi, collaborated on the project, which included re-working of the existing weights and the addition of several new weights: small caps, old style figures, light, heavy, and condensed.

The original Optima was never manufactured with a real italic, only an oblique version of the roman. Optima Nova has a complete range of beautifully designed real italics; the new italic forms, of the e, f and g are especially notable.

The titling face includes capital letters with special and unusual letter combinations and ligatures, making it an excellent choice for headlines, logos and advertising purposes. Optima continues to be an all-purpose typeface; and Optima Nova works for just about anything from book text to signage.