The basic model for Minion did not come from any one single source, but was a synthesis of historical forms and the digital possibilities of the 1980s. In the course of his research for the Adobe Garamond (Place 5), Robert Slimbach collected a wealth of material on Renaissance typefaces from European museums. When Adobe began planning a new body text font, he brought the material out of his archive and gathered together all the usable ideas so that he could put a first draft down on paper. It was from this that Minion grew.

Minion became a feat of aesthetic and technical daring. Adobe had just invented its Multiple Master technology, which enabled font users to generate custom fonts themselves – a slightly stronger bold, for example – without the need for drawing tools. Slimbach succeeded, using as few interpolation points as possible, in constructing the Minion characters in such a way that they were able to reveal a distinct personality of their own, while at the same time producing serviceable results in Multiple Master mode.


A wealth of characters: Minion is an excellently constructed typeface and one of Adobe’s first OpenType Pro fonts