Minion (typeface)

Adobe Minion

Category	Serif
Classification	Garalde old-style
Designer(s)	Robert Slimbach
Date released	1990

Minion is a serif typeface designed by Robert Slimbach in 1990 for Adobe Systems and inspired by late Renaissance-era type. The name comes from the traditional naming system for type sizes, in which minion is between nonpareil and brevier, with the type body 7pt in height. As the name suggests, it is particularly intended as a font for body text in a classical style, neutral and practical while also slightly condensed to save space. Slimbach described the design as having "a simplified structure and moderate proportions."

Minion was developed using sophisticated interpolation or multiple master technology to create a range of weights and optical sizes suitable for different text sizes. This automation of font creation was intended to allow a gradual trend in styles from solid, chunky designs for caption-size small print to more graceful and slender designs for headings. It is an early member of what became Adobe's Originals program, which created a set of type families primarily for book and print use, many like Minion in a deliberately classical style. Minion is a very large family of fonts, including Greek and Cyrillic alphabets, optical sizes, condensed styles and stylistic alternates such as swash capitals. It is one of the most popular typefaces used in books, one of the most famous being The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst's book about fine printing and page layout.

Modern Minion releases are in the OpenType (otf) format, allowing a variety of stylistic alternates such as small caps and ligatures to be encoded in the same font. The original release used additional 'expert set' fonts for these features, and may remain used by designers using more primitive software such as Microsoft Office that have limited OpenType support. (Like many Slimbach (and other Adobe) fonts, Minion features a 'Th' ligature, a tradition derived from calligraphy.)

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