ITC Officina Display Volume

When Erik Spiekermann redesigned The Economist magazine 2001, he chose his typeface, Officina, as the “information” face – all the graphs, tables, sidebars and captions are set in ITC Officina Sans. When the faces were tested at large sizes for the cover, however, it became obvious that the design was not suited for display copy. Design changes were necessary. The changes Erik made to ITC Officina for The Economist became the basis for ITC Officina Display. “The display version I sketched out had sharp corners, the terminals are not as oblique, and the swings at the top left of the characters have all but gone.”

Only the Bold and Black weights were redesigned for The Economist. It became readily apparent, however, that these could serve as the foundation for a new suite of designs to complement the existing ITC Officina family. Erik worked with fellow type designer, Christian Schwartz to complete the new additions. The new designs are slightly heavier and fit a little snugger than the text versions. Punctuation marks and the dots over the ‘i’ and ‘j’ were made smaller. A series of dingbats was even created for the new designs. Many additional, more subtle, changes were also made to the original design–all with the goal of making Officina Display an excellent communicator at large sizes.