Amerigo (1986)
The first laser printers had a resolution of 300 dpi* and no hinting.**
This meant that a face like Optima (1958), with verticals that become
subtly wider at top and bottom, was badly misshapen. Even so, Bitstream
wanted a type of this kind and the result was Amerigo. I could see no
mileage in simply imitating Optima, but it was a different story with
an extension of the class that the Vox*** classification calls ‘incised’
and which includes Albertus (1932). Optima is broad, soft and round, whereas
Amerigo is narrower and sharper, with terminals that end wider and a bigger
contrast between thick and thin. Optima’s italic is a sloped roman,
whereas Amerigo has a genuine italic. Amerigo is not tied to a technology
that was soon superseded, and it can also be used in the present high
resolutions.
* Dots per inch.
** Hinting is information added to fonts to ensure that at low resolutions
the verticals in each individual size are the same width and that other
parts also stay the same. *** In 1963 the French typographer Maximilien
Vox published his own idiosyncratic type classification system.
Caflisch, M., ‘Bitstream Amerigo von Gerard Unger’, in Typografische
Monatsblätter 3, St. Gallen, 1989
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