A modern sans-serif design, Optima at first looks a little like Arial or Helvetica. However, its strokes are delicately tapered and carry residual serifs. In many ways, Optima's design follows humanist lines, but its italic variant is merely an oblique, a slanted roman.
Like Palatino, another Zapf creation, Optima is widely admired and widely pirated.
In the Bitstream font collection, Optima is called Zapf Humanist.