Today’s digital font technology has allowed renowned font designer and calligrapher Hermann Zapf to realize a dream he first had more than fifty years ago: to create a typeface that would come very close to the freedom and liveliness of beautiful handwriting.

The basic Zapfino font family, released in 1998, consists of four alphabets with many additional stylistic alternates that can be freely mixed together to emulate the variations in handwritten text. In 2003, Zapf completed Zapfino Extra, a large expansion of the Zapfino family. Designed in collaboration with Akira Kobayashi, Zapfino Extra has a cornucopia of new characters. It includes exuberant hyper-flourishes, elegant small caps, dozens of ornaments, more alternates and ligatures, index characters, and a very useful “forte” (bold) version.

Use Zapfino to produce unusual and graceful advertisements, packaging, and invitations.