SUPER SCRIPTS
BICKHAM SCRIPT
Richard Lipton’s Bickham Script is a flowing, formal, script typeface based on the lettering of 18th-century writing master George Bickham. Bickham’s book, Universal Penman, is generally considered to provide some of the best examples of formal scripts.

As a starting point, for Bickham, Lipton scanned letters that provided him with the essence of the design. Although Lipton’s design is not a replication of any specific script, he is clearly faithful to the spirit of the Bickham model. He has further explored the design possibilities of this classical Baroque writing style in the OpenType version, Bickham Script Pro. The cornerstone of this new release is a large set of “contextual” characters—an abundance of stylized letter and ligature variations that can be inserted in copy automatically. Certain same-letter pairs, often those with ascenders and descenders, are replaced by alternates and ligatures, eliminating visual repetition with subtle shape variations. Not only do varied ligatures appear, but also subtle changes to “exit” and “entry” strokes, both between letters and at word beginnings and endings. Try setting the following and you will see how Open-Type automatically makes character substitutions.

s su suf suff suffi suffic suffici sufficie sufficien sufficient

This is another font the size of a Sealy Posturepedic. The family also includes a set of swash capitals, flourished numerals, and an expanded set of accented characters for central European language coverage.

TOP: P22 CÉZANNE PRO, MIDDLE: LINOTYPE ZAPFINO EXTRA, BOTTOM: P22 MYSTIC

One of the drawbacks of its popularity, however, is that Cézanne is becoming too recognizable and possibly not as irregular as one would wish for in a handwriting font. For example, when duplicate letters appear next to each other in a word written in Cézanne, they look identical in all instances. Longtime P22 collaborator James Grieshaber took these concerns to heart and resolved both issues through the use of the OpenType format.

The result of Grieshaber’s efforts is Cézanne Pro, an expansive suite of options that provides for as many as six versions of each letter. There are hundreds of automatic substitutions programmed into the font but designers can also hand-select individual letters for more customized typography.

P22 Cézanne Pro includes full western and central European, and Cyrillic character sets. It also features several styles of numerals (lining, oldstyle proportional, tabular, superscript, subscript, and fractions), ligatures, snap-on swashes, and word glyphs such as the, of, and, and etc.

ZAPFINO EXTRA
Linotype’s Zap. no Extra is an expansion of the first Zapfino family released in 1998. The basic Roman alphabet with three additional script variations is also now complemented with small caps, additional ligatures, more alternate characters, and something Linotype calls “hyper-flourishes”—extremely large swashes that extend over two or three lines of copy. Also part of the font is a suite of abbreviations for name titles, swashes, beginning and ending characters, and over 100 ornament designs.

Based on an example of calligraphy Hermann Zapf drew in the mid-1940s, Zapfino takes full advantage of OpenType’s capability for very large character sets and contextual characters that change depending upon the letters that surround them. (Like Bickham Pro, it’s great fun to set Zapfino Extra large and watch the characters change as you type copy.)

Zapfino Extra is clearly a display-only design and the Linotype literature that accompanies the font warns, “Avoid overloading design with unnecessary elements.” This and the other OpenType script fonts are not meant to be used by simply typing on a keyboard. They are sophisticated tools that require skill and taste to perform best. While you don’t have to be a calligrapher to use Zapfino Extra, Bickham Pro, or Cézanne Pro, sensitivity toward typographic design helps.

MORE THAN WHAT MEETS THE EYE
MYSTIC
Finally, not all OpenType fonts are scholarly undertakings. Some are just for fun. Mystic, from P22, may look like a faux eastern script, but install it on your computer and you will find there is more to the design—much more.

This font peers into the world of the spirits for guidance and enlightenment. Sure, it has small caps and ligatures as OpenType features, but it also has a special “oracle” feature that will answer your most mystifying questions.

The design, based on the familiar Ouija-board lettering, somehow became embedded with the board’s spirits. Now, when a question is typed, an answer is revealed. It is not known how the otherworldly harbinger was able to integrate into OpenType scripting, but who are we mere mortals to question this power? Ask and ye shall be amazed!