In 1983, Zapf had completed the typeface "AMS Euler" with Donald Knuth and David Siegel of Stanford University for the American Mathematical Society, a typeface for mathematical composition including fraktur and Greek letters. David Siegel had recently finished his studies at Stanford and was interested in entering the field of typography. He told Zapf his idea of making a typeface with a large number of glyph variations; he wanted to start with an example of Zapf's calligraphy that was reproduced in a publication by the Society of Typographical Arts in Chicago.