ITC Officina
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. His typeface, ITC Officina, has all these traits – right down to the mischievous twinkle.
All kinds of versatility
When Erik Spiekermann first conceived of Officina in 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, with 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, the extended character set supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages.