Shadow Story
of Optima
A cardboard-made sculpture built up with optima font-shaped cardboard to demonstrate a story of the font creation in an interactive way.
Duration
2 weeks
Teammate My Role Tools
Jayme Tang Ideation Laser Cutter
Prototyping Cardboard
Design Challenge
Optima is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf between 1952 and 1955. In 1950, Hermann Zapf was inspired by the letters curved on a roman gravestone in Florence and designed this set of typeface.
How might we interpret this typeface in an interesting and interactive way?
Design Solution
The three sculptures made of Optima require the audience to use a flashlight to project letters’ shadows on the wall. Each shadow displays a significant turning point of how Optima was designed by Hermann Zapf. The intention is to use shadows to illustrate the story behind Optima.
Research
We firstly did some research about characteristics of optimal typeface, its creation process, or how the typeface compares to other fonts. Besides those basic information, we found three interesting facts about Optima:
1. Hermann Zapf was interested in electricity before he became a typeface designer. Also, in the same year that Optima was designed, optical fiber was invented.
2. Optima is created in the same year as the Barbie doll was invented.
3. Hermann Zapf had a hard time designing Optima. For example, he went through heart disease and the second World War.
Ideation
Tech-oriented
Based on the first fun fact, we were imagining if Zapf was alive, what will he experiment on his type design? So we speculated boldly that maybe he would want to combine Optima with the electricity he was interested in to create an electronic-version font. This was the inspiration for our first design.
A Booklet
Based on the second fact, we planned to design a booklet which combines Optima with the fashion design at that time. In this way, the popular elements of the same period can be combined to attract the audience to learn and read.
Shadow Story
Based on the third fact, Hermann Zapf actually had three turning points when he designed Optima. Thus, we planned to combine the shadow and story to conveys this "behind the scenes" feeling.
Prototype
We used laser cutter as a tool to cut cardboard into shapes of letters in Optima. Then we sketched out the shape of the shadow and adhered it to the wall. After that, we utilized glue to put letters together and placed them in front of the light to let the shadow match the shape on the wall. Finally, we built 3 tags that have the visual affordance of people where to put the phones.
Final Deliverable
Story one: World War ll
The shadow of a tank represents the World War II. Hermann Zapf joined the war service when World War II broke out. He was sent back to the office because of his heart disease, after which he became a type designer.
Story two: Inspiration by the gravestone
It is the side-view of Hermann Zapf’s face while he was looking at a roman gravestone in Florence. The letters on the tombstone inspired him to create Optima afterwards.
Story three: Sketch Optima
At the moment of inspiration, Hermann Zapf sketched the letters on a 1,000 lire bank note because he did not have any drawing paper.
