‘Optima’ type specimen – Cooper & Beatty, Anthony (Tony) Mann, 1963

A carefully designed brochure for Hermann Zapf’s Optima typeface. It was created in early 1963 when Tony Mann was just starting work on the new Cooper & Beatty visual identity program. The moss green may have been one of the trial colours he used before settling on the vivid orange that would become so closely associate with C&B. The company used a similar green, as well as a matching blue, for different divisions, but they don’t appear to have been applied consistently. This particular copy had been sent to Mono Lino and is date stamped Jun 4 1963. It was customary to stamp the date received on most incoming mail.

Mann’s brochure demonstrates that Optima can serve as both a striking monumental display type and a fine text face. Zapf’s original name for Optima was New Antique. The Roman letterform is older than the German Blackletter so in Germany roman typefaces are called Antiqua, which in English can often lead to apparently irresistible word plays such as ‘a new antique’. A sans serif design based on the classic roman letterform, which was always serifed, made Optima a radical design when first released and many graphic designers did not like it. However it quickly became one of the most popular typefaces in the Western world and is now considered a classic.