TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Mon Apr 15 06:46:22 EDT 2024

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Zanzibar

Zanzibar is a Filmotype script from the 1950's that has seen several digital revivals:

• In 2008, Mark Simonson revived it as Filmotype Zanzibar, and wrote: That Zanzibar is nearly an anagram of bizarre seems fitting. The surviving people from Filmotype (later Alphatype) have not been able to tell us who designed this gem, so we have no record of the designers intentions. Released in the early 1950s, it seems somewhat inspired by the work of Lucian Bernhard (Bernhard Tango, 1934) and Imre Reiner (Stradivarius, 1945). At first, it appears to be a formal script, but there are no connecting strokes. It would be better described as a stylized italic, similar to Bodoni Condensed Italic or Onyx Italic, with swash capitals.
• Dan Barthell's The Font Company sold a revival. Their fonts were available via Ascender for a while.
• SoftMaker's revival in 2019: Zanzibar. Earlier, SoftMaker marketed this as Z650 Script.
• OPTI Zanzibar (sic) by Castcraft in 1990s.

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