Two streaks; season’s reading; body-text fonts, pt. 10: Optima
A little trivia, and then I’ll be quiet about the World Cup until the South Americans’ qualification tournament begins in March.
Two venerable – for me, virtually life-long – streaks were left intact:
(1) The tournament was won by a first-round group winner. Not since 1982 has this not occurred; that year, Italy won the tournament having finished behind Poland in the first round. (Italy did win its three-team quarterfinal group.)
The lesson: A team ought to play well enough from the outset to win its group and not just qualify out of it.
(2) Even more remarkable: The final game of this World Cup featured players employed by Bayern Munich and Inter Milan, as has every World Cup final since, and including, that of 1982. Dayot Upamecano (Bayern) was a starter in this year’s final, and Kingsley Coman (Bayern) and Lautaro Martínez (Inter) came off the bench – Martínez in the 102nd minute.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I’ve picked some Canadian or quasi-Canadian literature to read or finish reading this winter.
Good luck to me.
(This is in honor of the solstice, the coming blizzard, and especially Canada’s rare and brief World Cup appearance – most of which I contrived to miss. My Internet died during one game; I was in church during another; and during the third game, I chose to watch Belgium vs. Croatia instead.)
One of the books from my list is the source of this month’s body-text sample, which is set in Hermann Zapf’s Optima. This is surely one of the most elegant typefaces, although it’s not often used for large blocks of literary text. Which is a shame. The Canadian Journal of Philosophy was set in Optima many years ago. My church’s history, Merging Streams, is set in Optima, as is Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word. This blog currently is typeset with an Optima clone, URW Classico. Another clone is Zapf Humanist 601; a third, with old-style numerals, is Epigrafica; and a fourth, with old-style numerals and small capitals, is Ophian.
Two venerable – for me, virtually life-long – streaks were left intact:
(1) The tournament was won by a first-round group winner. Not since 1982 has this not occurred; that year, Italy won the tournament having finished behind Poland in the first round. (Italy did win its three-team quarterfinal group.)
The lesson: A team ought to play well enough from the outset to win its group and not just qualify out of it.
(2) Even more remarkable: The final game of this World Cup featured players employed by Bayern Munich and Inter Milan, as has every World Cup final since, and including, that of 1982. Dayot Upamecano (Bayern) was a starter in this year’s final, and Kingsley Coman (Bayern) and Lautaro Martínez (Inter) came off the bench – Martínez in the 102nd minute.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I’ve picked some Canadian or quasi-Canadian literature to read or finish reading this winter.
- Margaret Atwood, Surfacing
- Kate Beaton, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
- Pierre Berton, The Comfortable Pew
- Rachel Cusk, Outline
- Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost
- Brian Moore, The Mangan Inheritance
- Alice Munro, Dance of the Happy Shades
- Howard Norman, The Northern Lights (or maybe The Bird Artist)
- Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries
- Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper
Good luck to me.
(This is in honor of the solstice, the coming blizzard, and especially Canada’s rare and brief World Cup appearance – most of which I contrived to miss. My Internet died during one game; I was in church during another; and during the third game, I chose to watch Belgium vs. Croatia instead.)
One of the books from my list is the source of this month’s body-text sample, which is set in Hermann Zapf’s Optima. This is surely one of the most elegant typefaces, although it’s not often used for large blocks of literary text. Which is a shame. The Canadian Journal of Philosophy was set in Optima many years ago. My church’s history, Merging Streams, is set in Optima, as is Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word. This blog currently is typeset with an Optima clone, URW Classico. Another clone is Zapf Humanist 601; a third, with old-style numerals, is Epigrafica; and a fourth, with old-style numerals and small capitals, is Ophian.
