Palatino: most knocked-off font

[ktinkel]

Almost everyone loves Palatino. For designer Hermann Zapf, that is a mixed blessing, as it is at least one of the most knocked-off, cloned, or otherwise copied fonts in existence.

If you are not familiar with the face, it may be that you have Book Antiqua (Monotype/Microsoft), Zapf Calligraphic (Bitstream), or Palladio (URW) on your system instead. They are all versions of Palatino, and designer Zapf actually collaborated in development of two of them (but not Book Antiqua, an unauthorized — and thus unpaid-for — copy that offended him grievously).

He has since contributed to an OpenType version that is distributed by Microsoft (bundled with some versions of Windows and perhaps other products): Palatino Linotype.

Anyway, I had overlooked a Frank Romano column in Electronic Publishing, “Hermann Zapf and Palatino,” that discusses some of this history, and mentions Zapf’s many achievements, including other fonts he has designed.

[ Just catching up on my magazine reading! ]