Minion (font)

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Minion
font Minion
category Serif
Font family Minion
Font classification French Renaissance Antiqua
Font designer Robert Slimbach
Client Adobe Type
Creation 1990

Minion is the name of a digital typeface designed by Robert Slimbach for Adobe Inc. in 1990 .

It is a text font in the style of the French Renaissance Antiqua , which is designed a little more cautiously than the similar Adobe Garamond that Slimbach had designed immediately before. In contrast to Garamond and similar typefaces, it is not a digital reinterpretation of a historical typeface, but a new development in the style of humanistic Antiqua, designed as a digital font from the start . Individual details of the font such as the straight basic lines of the serifs and the equally strong verticals are due to the consideration of the screen and print resolution that were limited at the time . Günter Schuler emphasizes "the calm, balanced typeface" of the Minion, which unobtrusively combines good legibility with an aesthetically pleasing design and is therefore often used as a typeface for running text in books and magazines.

The name Minion (derived from the French mignonne ) is ambiguous: As an ancient font size designation from the English typesetting language, it describes a font size of 7  points (corresponding to the German Kolonel or Mignon). Minion in English also means something like “darling”, “darling”, “favorite”, “favorite”, “servant” or as an adjective “elegant”, “jewelry”.

The font, originally published in PostScript format, appeared in different variants over the years.

Minion

The original version of the Minion included the Adobe ISO character set. It was supplemented by additional Expert character sets with special characters, small caps , ligatures , old -style numerals and ornate letter variants (swash) as well as ornaments.

A special feature of the font was that it was published in two different optical sizes from the beginning ; In addition to the regular version for reading sizes, there was a display version for headings, each with the appropriate italic . The two variants showed differences in the proportions, line widths and spacing of the letters in order to optimize the reading impression for the respective application and font size range. There was only one variant for the semi-bold and bold font styles, as was the case for the narrow (condensed) styles.

Minion Cyrillic

The Minion Cyrillic was developed in 1992 by Robert Slimbach as a version in Cyrillic script . There were neither expert fonts nor display sizes for them.

Minion MM

Also in 1992, a further developed variant of the multiple master technology (abandoned by Adobe in 1998) appeared , which allowed the user to change the spacing , line width and optical size of the font within specified limits and thus create his own modifications of the font. Based on font styles in 6 and 72 point optimized for the respective size, theoretically an infinite number of intermediate sizes and shapes could be created. The Minion MM was the first multiple master font that made it possible to change its optical size.

Minion Std Black

The Minion Standard Black was the first variant of the Minion that appeared in open-type format with a significantly larger set of characters. It was later not integrated into the Minion Pro family, but was retained as a separate font.

Minion Pro

In 2000, Adobe completely converted the Minion to the Open Type format and re-released the font family under the name Minion Pro . The Minion Pro is based on the Minion MM, but in the course of the changeover to Open Type, the fonts were revised again and adjustments were made to character spacing and kerning.

In this version, the Minion font family comprised three, later four weights ( Regular , Semibold and Bold , subsequently supplemented by Medium ), each with the appropriate italics, two fonts (normal and narrow ( Condensed )) and four optical sizes ( Caption , Regular , Subhead and display ). In addition to the font variants that were previously available in the Expert character sets, the Minion Pro fonts also contain the Cyrillic characters of the Minion Cyrillic as well as characters for Central European languages, Greek and Vietnamese.

Optical sizes Caption Regular Subhead Display
Suitable for point sizes 6-8.4 8.5-13 13.1-19.9 20+

Minion 3

In April 2018, Adobe released the Minion 3 version, which was again revised and expanded by Slimbach . The number of glyphs in Latin script has almost doubled, partly through the inclusion of African languages; In addition, the new version has been expanded to include the Armenian alphabet and the IPA characters . The Greek lower case letters show a new design of the line width , whose "left-facing" ratio of basic and hair lines is based on the handwritten tradition; the previous forms were retained as an OpenType Style Set. In the Cyrillic alphabet, the character set has also been expanded and supplemented with small caps and alternative forms, and the shape of the individual letters revised; in particular, letter combinations are now narrower to improve legibility. The optical sizes have been improved and are now available for all alphabets.

Minion Web and Web Pro

The Minion Web is a TrueType version of the Minion, which is mainly intended for screen display and the design of websites. It therefore only includes the Adobe ISO character set. The Minion Web was supplied with Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0 web browser . The Minion Web Pro is a later version with an extended character set.

Minion Math

This variant of the font has been developed since 2002 by Johannes Küster from typoma GmbH, originally under the name typoma MnMath for mathematical applications. It first appeared in November 2008 as an open-type font in the same thicknesses and optical sizes as the Minion Pro, but also has the optical size Tiny for font sizes below 6 points. With the exception of the Tiny size, which contains a complete character set, the Minion Math is designed as a supplement to the Minion Pro and only includes special mathematical characters, in the current version 1,026 around 3300 characters per font style (as of May 2014). An extension to all mathematical Unicode characters and numerous other symbols has been announced.

Minion in foreign scripts

Adobe also uses the Minion's Latin characters in font families for other writing systems such as Adobe Arabic (Arabic), Adobe Hebrew (Hebrew), Adobe Thai (Thai), Adobe Song (simplified Chinese).

Use in corporate design

A number of companies and institutions use the Minion as a basic or supplementary corporate font for correspondence and publications, including Air France , Deutsche Post AG and DHL , Hoffmann-La Roche , Springer Wissenschaftsverlag , the University of Vienna and Carl Zeiss AG .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Minion 3 - History at Adobe Typekit
  2. ^ Günter Schuler: body types. Compendium of typesetting: Serif, Sans Serif and Slab Serif. Smart Books, Kilchberg 2003, p. 225
  3. ↑ Type 1 ("PostScript") to OpenType font conversion
  4. ↑ Minion 3 - Design at Adobe Typekit
  5. ↑ typoma writings
  6. ↑ http://www.typografie.info/3/page/hausschriften.html - List of house fonts, accessed on January 18, 2014.