Gudrun Zapf von Hesse designed Smaragd for D. Stempel AG, who released it in 1952.

Smaragd is a hand-tooled, all-caps titling face with hairline serifs.

Smaragd works well for book titles, invitations, calling cards, and posters. Smaragd Alternate differs from the main face in offering a hollow variant of the umlaut (dieresis) accented characters.