PESSIMA was inspired by the opening titles of the film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the 1978 version--my favorite--directed by Philip Kaufman, titles by Pacific Title.) They look like a corroded, bold version of Optima*, Hermann Zapf's classic "serifless roman" from 1958. In the film, the corrosion varies from letter to letter and cleverly suggests the biologic horror to come.

This is not the familiar, elegant Optima* of gentle curves, but my deteriorated, jagged re-drawing of it. Despite the battering, the overall shapes are still recognizable. My font is more striated, less randomly roughened than the film titles. I discovered that Pessima reversed resembled birch bark, so I've made a companion outline font.