1. Releases
    Minion   Minion Cyrillic    Minion MM    Minion Std Black    Minion Pro    Minion Web    Minion Web Pro    Minion Math and MnSymbol   Minion 3 (2018)   Minion in other font families  

2. Reception

3. Usage

4. References

5. External links

Minion was developed into a large family using sophisticated interpolation or multiple master technology to create a range of weights and optical sizes suitable for different text sizes.^[7][8][9] This automation of font creation was intended to create a seamless transition of styles from solid, chunky designs for caption-size small print to more graceful and slender designs for headings.^[10]{{efn|The original goal was that this would be controllable from inside applications using text, so a user could fine-tune the font to the exact form they needed (thickness, optical size, level of condensation, etc.)^[11] Making apps support this proved impractical, and so instead multiple master fonts have been released in a set of styles likely to be useful.^[12]}} 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 historical, humanist style.{{efn|This describes their original design goal: with the growth of webfonts and higher-resolution displays it has become more practical to use them for onscreen use as well.}}

Minion is a very large family of fonts, including Greek, Armenian and Cyrillic alphabets, optical sizes, condensed styles and stylistic alternates such as swash capitals.^[13] As a standard font in many of Adobe's programs, it is one of the most popular serif typefaces used in books. One of the most famous uses of Minion is The Elements of Typographic Style, Robert Bringhurst's book about fine printing and page layout.^[14][15]

Releases

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 has limited OpenType support. Like many Adobe fonts, Minion included a 'Th' ligature derived from traditional calligraphy.^[16]

Minion

The original release. Minion Black does not have an italic counterpart. Minion Expert is a separate font package that include fonts containing small caps, ligatures, old style figures, and swash glyphs. There are also fonts for dingbats (Minion Ornaments), and a Black-weighted font (Minion Black Expert). Swash fonts are included for only the 2 lightest font weights. An 'expert set' font is used for older and simpler applications that cannot handle multiple text styles for the same letter (such as both lower-case letters and small caps) in the same font. Slimbach stated, "I saw it as being useful in text applications like newspapers, textbooks, and manuals, as well as signage and titles."^[17]

Minion Cyrillic

Minion Cyrillic was designed in 1992 by Robert Slimbach and was conceived as a non-Latin counterpart to Slimbach’s Minion typeface family. There were no Display-sized fonts, expert fonts, or Black-weighted fonts in this family.

Minion MM

The Multi Master version of the original Minion family, released in 1992. Commonly used in Adobe Acrobat to replace unknown fonts.

Minion Std Black

An OpenType version of the Minion Black font, but includes features found in Expert versions of PostScript Minion Black fonts. In addition, character set was updated to support Adobe Western 2.

Minion Pro

An OpenType update of the original family, released in 2000. The update is based on Minion MM but features slight changes to the selection of instances and modifications of the font metrics.^[18]

The family comes with 3 (later 4, which adds Medium) weights, each in roman and italic, 2 widths, and 4 optical sizes (not sold in all packages). The Black weight from Minion Black Expert was not included. Each font includes the expert glyphs and dingbats that were previously found in Minion Expert package (swashes available in italic fonts only), Cyrillic Glyphs from Minion Cyrillic. In addition, the font family supports Adobe CE, Adobe Western 2, Greek, Latin Extended, Vietnamese character sets.

Minion Pro won the bukva:raz! 2001 award under the Greek category.^[19]

Minion Web

A TrueType version of Minion, designed for screen use. It supports ISO-Adobe character set. Version 1.00 of the font was distributed with Internet Explorer 4.0.

Minion Web Pro

An updated version of Minion Web, which supports Adobe CE and Adobe Western 2 character sets.

Minion Math and MnSymbol

Minion Math is a variant designed by Johannes Küster from typoma GmbH, for mathematical applications.^[20][21] Minion Math family includes 20 fonts in 4 weights and 5 optical sizes each. An additional optical size 'Tiny' is added. The October 2011 version (1.020) contains about 2900 glyphs per font; it also added OpenType math features. Minion Math had a working title, typoma MnMath. The final form is expected to include all Unicode mathematical symbols and many additional symbols.

An older companion to Adobe's Minion Pro (rather than replacement) is Achim Blumensath's MnSymbol, typically (but not necessarily) used from TeX.^[22] Although MnSymbol has a packaging as OpenType, it only provides TeX font metrics for math.

Minion 3 (2018)

A rerelease including Armenian, redesigned Greek characters and other modifications.^{[23][24][25][26]}

Minion in other font families

The Latin Minion glyphs are also used in other Adobe font families, including Adobe Arabic (Arabic), Adobe Hebrew (Hebrew), Adobe Thai (Thai), and Adobe Song (simplified Chinese).

Reception

Minion has generally received praise for its effectiveness as a clean, neutral book face with a very comprehensive range of features and styles. Slimbach himself has described it as "an exercise in restraint", noting that his other old-style serif designs, Arno and Jenson, are more eccentric.^[27]

Type designer Matthew Butterick mildly criticised it for being overused: "Minion is beautifully made—it’s balanced, it’s clean, it’s handsome, it’s conservative. It’s easy to like. And it’s been hugely successful as a book font, meaning you will not get fired for using Minion ... [but] Minion succeeds so well in being noncontroversially good-looking that I find it sort of dull."^[28]

Usage

• In 2003, Brown University adopted Minion as the typeface for the University logo.^[29]
• In 2008, Wake Forest University adopted Minion Pro as its primary serif typeface as part of its project to update the university's visual identity, noting that the font "… exhibits warmth and balance …".^[30]
• Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style (Hartley & Marks, 2008) uses Minion as its body face.^[31]
• University of Otago uses Minion as its serif typeface, including in its logo.^[32]
• The logo of the Smithsonian is Minion Pro.^[33]
• The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language is printed in Adobe Minion.^[34]

References

External links

• [https://www.fontspring.com/fonts/adobe/minion-pro Minion Pro at Fontspring] - Adobe's preferred reseller
• [https://fontsinuse.com/typefaces/4291/minion Fonts in Use]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20081202090806/http://www.river-valley.tv/conferences/tug2008/ TUG2008] contains info on Minion Math
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20090509093249/http://developer.berlios.de/projects/minionpro MinionPro – LaTeX package]
• Using Minion Pro with LaTeX
• Minion® Math

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