Hermann Zapf was born in Nuremberg in 1918. Between 1934 and 1938, Hermann Zapf served an apprenticeship as a retoucher at Nuremberg printers Karl Ulrich & Co. In 1938/39 Hermann Zapf worked in the Paul Koch printing workshop in Frankfurt am Main. From 1947 until 1956 Hermann Zapf was employed in the typographical division of the Stempel type foundry. There Hermann Zapf designed the Optima (from 1958), Palatino (from 1948), and Sistina (1951) typefaces. Between 1957 and 1974. Hermann Zapf served as an adviser to the Linotype Company in New York. From 1972 until 1981 Hermann Zapf taught typography at the Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt. Between 1977 and 1987, Hermann Zapf was also a professor at the School of Printing in Rochester, New York. While there, Hermann Zapf did pioneering work in digitalizing a great many fonts for the new computer software. So prolific was Hermann Zapf as a typographer that he invented more than 200 typefaces, of which some are today among the most widely used standard fonts. From 1977 Hermann Zapf designed the ITC Zapf typeface and, from 1999, Zapfino.