17 Fonts Similar to Optima

The Optima font family is one of those incredibly striking yet simple font families that you just want to own.

You can find Yadon and other terrific Optima alternatives at Envato Elements

In celebration of this wonderful font created in the 1950s, we thought we'd share a selection of fonts similar to Optima to show you how designers have updated its look today.

Optima Font History

Optima was created in Germany in 1958 by Hermann Zapf. Zapf's inspiration came from the design of letters carved on Renaissance-period tombstones he saw while vacationing in Florence in 1950. When Zapf returned home, he spent the better part of the decade working to create Optima.

Optima was first manufactured as a foundry version in 1958 by Stempel of Frankfurt, and by Mergenthaler in the USA soon after. It was introduced at an exhibition in Düsseldorf later that year.

Optima Typeface Characteristics

Classified as a sans-serif, Optima distinguishes itself with strokes subtly widen as they reach stroke terminals. Zapf says that his key aim in designing Optima's capitals was the desire to avoid the monotony of all capital letters having a roughly square footprint.

Fonts Similar to Optima

Optima is a beautiful font with an elegant, understated quality that's hard to emulate. Here are a few Optima alternatives that capture the essence of the font while offering their own unique twist.

Severn Sans Serif Font Family (TTF, OTF, WOFF)

Severn Sans Serif Font is a modern minimalist font that brings a clean and stylish quality to your designs. It comes with three weights—regular, light, and bold—and offers the full collection of upper and lowercase characters, numbers, and punctuation.

Charlton Sans Serif Font Family (TTF, OTF, WOFF)

If you're a fan of Optima, then you'll love Charlton Sans Serif Font. This clean and beautiful font contains nine different weights and is an excellent choice for branding, titles, logos, headers, and more.

Maquna: Stylish Sans Serif Typeface (TTF, OTF, WOFF)

How about Maquna Sans Serif? This bold and eye-catching optima alternative offers uppercase characters only, but it does include tons of beautiful ligatures, special alternative glyphs, ornaments, and multilingual support.

Berton Sans Serif Font Family Pack (TTF, OTF, WOFF)

How cool is Berton Sans Serif Font, an Optima alternative that is offered in three different weights so that you can create the exact look you're after. Berton is an excellent display font to use in any number of projects.

Amaryllis Sans (TTF, OTF)

Use Amaryllis Sans for logo branding, editorial design, stationery design, blog design, modern advertising and all those projects that require a font that says simple but stylish.

Logam: Luxury Sans Serif Font Family (TTF, OTF)

Looking for a font similar to Optima Bold? How about Logam? A terrific display font to be used when you need a simply elegant font to create text for special projects.

Yadon Sans Serif Fonts Family Pack (TTF, OTF, WOFF)

Yadon Sans Serif Font is another font similar to Optima Bold that you need to consider when you are looking for a stand-out display font. Aside from uppercase characters, Optima includes a full collection of lowercase characters, numbers, and punctuation.

Breadley Sans (TTF, OTF)

Breadley Sans is an Optima alternative with a bit more of a stylistic twist than the other fonts featured here. For some it might be too much of a twist, but for many it will be just what you were looking for.

Malak Sans Serif Font Family (TTF, OTF, WOFF)

Malak is a young font making a name for itself. This beautiful sans serif font offers three weights and includes upper and lowercase characters, numbers, punctuation, and support for multiple languages.

KLARA: Elegant Sans Serif Font (TTF, OTF, WOFF)

Klara is a terrific alternative to Optima typeface that offers a similar timeless elegance. Klara includes upper and lowercase characters, numbers, punctuation, and support for multiple languages. It works beautifully for magazine titles, advertisements, branding, quotes, web titles, and more.

Brixanos Sans Serif Modern Font (TTF, OTF, WOFF)

Brixanos is another Optima alternative well suited for branding, magazine, marketing design, technology, sci-fi design, headlines, and more.

Maghony: Modern Sans Serif Font (TTF, OTF, WOFF)

Maghony is another great display font to consider when you're looking for fonts similar to Optima Bold. It's a terrific choice for branding, social media posts, titles, and signage.

Avoda: Modern Sans Serif (TTF, OTF, WOFF)

Avoda is an elegant and modern sans serif font that's another great Optima alternative. Though it offers more contrast in strokes than Optima, it possesses the same understated elegance of that font.

Elegance: Modern Sans Serif (TTF, OTF)

Elegance is a thoroughly modern font that, like Avoda above, offers more contrast in stroke thickness than Optima does. However, it's a great alternative to Optima when you are looking to create a statement with your font. Elegance includes four versions: light, regular, semibold, and bold.

Leander (TTF, OTF)

Leander is a terrific font that can be used for just about every purpose imaginable, from branding to product design. Give it a shot when you are looking for Optima alternatives.

Ravenously Sans Serif Font (TTF, OTF, WOFF)

Of all the fonts we've shared here, Ravenously is probably the most divergent from Optima in that its strokes are somewhat heavier than Optima's. However it's still a great alternative when you are looking for a bold font that will stand out well in larger projects.

Dayleen Sans Serif Font Family (TTF, OTF, WOFF)

And finally, there is Dayleen, a wonderful, stylish choice when you are in search of fonts similar to Optima. Offered in four weights, Optima includes upper and lowercase characters, numbers, and punctuation.

Discover More Optima Alternatives

Now that you know a bit about the Optima font history and have seen some examples of fonts similar to Optima, why not head on over to Envato Elements and/or GraphicRiver and download your favourite.

And if you want more awesome font inspiration, try some of these articles: