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Otmar Hoefer is the Director of Font Marketing at Linotype Library and based in Germany.

After a visiting a printer as a young boy with his parents, he was inspired to work with print and typefaces. Being the son of famed calligrapher and type designer Karlgeorg Hoefer also helped with his career choice!

Otmar’s role today is to give inspiration and ideas for new typefaces and to help designers with the transition from traditional working methods to present day desktop publishing and digital software – and of course, to ensure that typography trends are always paramount to good design.

Otmar Hoefer has strong views on the future of type. He outlines the challenges the typographer faces with low resolution publishing on the internet for example, but also praises some of the recent advances that allow the designer to continue to work dynamically with typefaces. Opentype fonts are very important for people working in the global community, and software such as QuarkXPress has liberated designers, particularly with features such as transparency, kerning and tracking.