Melior (with paragraphs)

Designer: Hermann Zapf, 9/11/18 - current.

Origin: Designed in 1952 and released by the Stempel Foundry.

Classification: Transitional

Hermann Zapff created Melior as a typeface that would be ultimately suitable for newspapers, magazines and other long texts. It has a larger x-height so characters can easily be distinguished. The individual characters themselves, were based on the rectangle, which is especially noticeable in the capital O. Melior would be categorized under the Transitional classification, mainly because of its larger x-height (something not common to the Old Style), and its stress in line. The contrast in thick and thins is more exaggerated than Old Style fonts, yet the thins are still thicker than those of the Modern fonts.

Melior can be compared to other transitional fonts such as: Caslon, Mrs Eaves, and Baskerville




Other than an exciting new font being created by Mr. Zapf, here’s what else happened in 1952:

King George VI of England died, and on Feb. 6 his daughter Elizabeth was proclaimed Queen of England.

Harry S. Truman was U.S. President. Alben W. Barkley was U.S. Vice-President. Dean Acheson was U.S. Secretary of State. Frederick M. Vinson was Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Associate Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court included: Hugo L. Black, Stanley Reed, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Robert H. Jackson, Harold H. Barton, Tom C. Clark, Sherman Minton.

Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union. Fulgencio Batista took power in Cuba. In Egypt, a military coup overthrew King Farouk.

In 1952, the hydrogen bomb was detonated for the first time. The contraceptive pill was introduced. Polio vaccine was developed. The transistor radio was developed.
Pius XII was Pope. Geoffrey Francis Fisher was Archbishop of Canterbury. Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Vincent Auriol was President of France. Konrad Adenauer was Chancellor of West Germany.
Evita Peron, wife of Argentine President Juan Peron, died.

Albert Schweitzer won the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize. François Mauriac won the 1952 Nobel prize for Literature.

Herman Wouk won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for The Caine Mutiny. Marianne Moore won the Pulitzer prize in poetry for Collected Poems. No Pulitzer award was given for drama in 1952.
Ernest Hemingway's novel The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952. John Steinbeck's novel East of Eden was published in 1952.
In 1952, the Korean War continued. The U.S. launched bombing attacks against North Korea. The Indochinese War continued. The Mau Mau rebellion began in Kenya. Greece and Turkey joined NATO.
President Truman decided not to run for reelection. The Republicans held their convention in Chicago on July 7, and nominated Dwight D. Eisenhower for President. The Democrats held their convention in Chicago on July 21, and nominated Adlai E. Stevenson. In the elections on Nov. 4, Eisenhower defeated Stevenson, and became President-Elect, with Richard M. Nixon as his Vice-President.




Hermann Zapf is a German Typeface designer who currently lives in Darmstadt, Germany. He is married to the calligrapher/ typeface designer/ babe, Gudrun Zapf. Other than Melior, he created Palatino, Optima, and Zapfino. He was born in Nuremberg, near the end of World War I. In his early years he lost two of his siblings to the flu. In school, he was manly interested in technical subjects, and read books such as “The New Universe.” Zapf left school in 1993 to follow his brothers footsteps and pursue a career in electrical engineering. However, his father had been involved with some trade unions, which lead him to be sent to the Dachau Concentration camp for a short while. So due to the political situation, Zapf, who was in search for an apprenticeship, was widely denied. It wasn’t until he visited Rudolf Koch’s typography exhibition in Nuremberg that he became interested in the subject. In 1931, Zapf was sent to Pirmasens to help reinforce the Siegfried Line in the war against france. Luckily, he quickly developed heart trouble and was given a desk job keeping war records. After the war, he taught calligraphy in Nuremberg for a while and then in Offenbach. Zaph has designed typfaces in metal, phototypesetting, and digital typography. Palatino and Optima were developed 4 years apart beginning with Palatino in 1948. These are perhaps his two most famous fonts. Zapf has been working on typography in computer programs since the 1960s. His ideas were considered radical, not taken seriously in Germany, and rejected by the Darmstadt University of Technology, where Zapf lectured between 1972 and 1981. Because he had no success in Germany, Zapf went to the United States, where new ideas were more likely to be accepted. He lectured about his ideas in computerized typesetting, and was invited to speak at Harvard University in 1964. The University of Texas at Austin was also interested in Zapf, and offered him a professorship. However, Zapf's wife said that she would never go to Texas, having only seen it from the air, and Zapf's dreams of Texas ended. In 1976, the Rochester Institute of Technology offered Zapf a professorship in typographic computer programming, the first of its type in the world. He taught there from 1977 to 1987, flying between Darmstadt and Rochester. There he developed his ideas further, with the help of his connections in companies such as IBM and Xerox, and his discussions with the computer specialists at Rochester. A number of Zapf's students from this time at RIT went on to become influential type designers, including Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes, who together created the Lucida type family. Other prominent students include calligrapher/font designer Julian Waters and book designer Jerry Kelly. In 1977, Zapf and his friends Aaron Burns and Herb Lubalin founded a company called "Design Processing International, Inc." in New York and developed typographical computer software. It existed until 1986 with the death of Lubalin, and Zapf and Burns founded "Zapf, Burns & Company" in 1987. Burns, also an expert in typeface design and in typography, was in charge of marketing until his death in 1992. Shortly before, two of their employees had stolen Zapf's ideas and founded a company of their own.

“Type design is one of the most visible and widespread forms
of graphic expression in daily life. It is still not noticed by all
readers of newspapers, magazines or books. Nevertheless letter forms
reflect the style of a period, and its cultural background.
We are surrounded by them everywhere.” - Hermann Zapf