Erik Spiekermann first conceived of the ITC Officina™ typeface design in the early 1980s. His goal was to create a family of type that was ideally suited for office correspondence and business documentation. ITC Officina soon revealed, however, that it had capabilities far beyond its original intention.
The ITC Officina font clearly stood on its own as a highly legible, remarkably functional type style, Spiekermann’s ambitions for the design now extended beyond the office environment; he sought to develop a family of type suitable for a wide range of typographic applications.
The ITC Officina font is a big family. Both the Serif and Sans Serif versions are available in five weights, each with corresponding italics. These twenty styles make for an exceptionally versatile communication tool. Proportionally, the Officina font's design is slightly condensed to make it economical in its use of space. Counters are full and the serifs are strong enough to remain legible at small sizes – especially important when used on low-resolution output devices and lesser grades of paper stock.
In 2001 Spiekermann added a volume of display faces to the ITC Officina family. The ITC Officina Display faces 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 the Officina Display font an excellent communicator at large sizes.
