TypeSetting

Typeface: Myriad

7 min readNov 30, 2020

Part 1: Crafting Narrative

List of Adjectives

Uniform
Versatile
Casual
Legible
Readable
Youthful
Refined
Flexible
Warmth
Easy

Brief Statement

Carol Twombly and Robert Slimbach designed Myriad for Adobe System in 1992. It was redeveloped as an OpenType font family, called Myriad Pro. Its readability and warmth create the most demanding display typography. Within the confines of contemporary typography, Myriad became the most used and easily distinguished typeface to convey a modern or progressive feeling.

Essay

Myriad, designed by Carol Twombly and Robert Slimbach, was created for Adobe Systems in 1992 and has become a standard throughout the world of digital typography. Myriad is also a popular typeface that has a good balance between contemporary and classic font design. Adobe announced that Myriad Pro “expands sans serif family to include Greek and Cyrillic characters, as well as adding old-style figures and improving support for Latin-based languages.” Its readability and warmth result from its humanistic letter forms. The purpose of this sans-serif typeface was to create an easy-to-read, inclusive, and generic personality. Because of this characteristic, this typeface was jokingly nicknamed Generica.

Myriad, one of the most in demand body text typefaces, offers various font styles: Condensed, normal, extended widths and five weights varying from light to black. This font has perfectly straight stems, flat endings, and character shapes with a certain amount of proportion. While Myriad doesn’t offer dramatically innovative style from a design perspective, it has broad flexibility. It allows users the ability to create many different voices and change the character and mood of a design with its many variables: Weight, width, size, and style. Myriad is often compared to the humanist typeface Frutiger, but Myriad’s stems are more perpendicular to its stroke direction. Additionally, Frutiger has an oblique set while Myriad incorporates a true italic shape.

Overall, this humanist sans-serif exhibits a wider set of variants than grotesque or geometric faces, and is well suited for a broad range of text and display applications. Because of its readability and accessibility, Myriad has been adopted by a wide variety of companies like Apple, Adobe, Linkedin, and Walmart.

Essay Edited version

Myriad, designed by Carol Twombly and Robert Slimbach, was created for Adobe Systems in 1992 and has become a standard throughout the world of digital typography. Myriad is also a popular typeface that has a good balance between contemporary and classic font design. In 2000, Adobe announced that Myriad Pro “expands sans serif family to include Greek and Cyrillic characters, as well as adding old-style figures and improving support for Latin-based languages.” Its readability and warmth result from its humanistic letter forms. The purpose of this sans-serif typeface was to create an easy-to-read, inclusive, and generic personality. Because of this characteristic, this typeface was jokingly nicknamed Generica.

The full Myriad family, one of the most in demand body text typefaces, offers various font styles: Condensed, normal, extended widths and five weights varying from light to black. This font has perfectly straight stems, flat endings, and character shapes with a certain amount of proportion. While Myriad doesn’t offer dramatically innovative style from a design perspective, it has broad flexibility. It allows users the ability to create many different voices and change the character and mood of a design with its many variables: Weight, width, size, and style.

Myriad is often compared to the humanist typeface Frutiger, but Myriad’s stems are more perpendicular to its stroke direction. Adobe also claimed that its clean open shapes, precise letter fit, and extensive kerning pairs make this unified family of roman and italic an excellent choice for text typography. Additionally, Myriad incorporates a true italic shape while Frutiger has an oblique set. Myriad is also known for replacing Apple Garamond as Apple’s sans serif typeface. Some called Myriad, “the new Helvetica” when it replaced Helvetica as the default font for Adobe.

Font Research

Adjectives: Refined or Warmth, Energetic,

Body text &logo type
Captions, running heads and folios, bold chapter opening numbers, or assertive chapter titles all work well
40 fonts in an array of weights and widths — gives a palette of colors and variations on the basic letterforms to create designs

How is it different from other fonts?

While other Sans serif fonts have either extreme tilted or perpendicular stroke endings like Arial and Helvetica, Myriad creates the in-between level of combinations.

What is special about Myriad?

Used for:

Part 2: Type explorations & sketches

What to consider:

How much am I trying to explore?
Will I challenge to break the middle line?
How can I show/express my adjectives within the spread?
How am I going to use the negative space and balance between too much or too less

Thumbnail Sketches

Digital Format

Page size: 8” x 10.5” (two-page spread: 16” x 10.5”)

Typography Pairing (Myriad)

Imagery

11/30

Meeting with Vicki

Try to think about how “6 Principles of Design” can be combined within my poster

What is Versatile and What is Myriad?

New Adjective Terms:

Versatile: able to adapt or be adapted to many different functions or activities.

Myriad: a countless or extremely great number.

Text Layout Studies

In-class Feedbacks

Having specific logo type might not be efficient to explain the typeface(Myriad is not only about Apple, but being used by other companies like Adobe, Linkedin, etc.
Try to think about how to create a transition across the spread.

Meeting with Vicki:

2nd spread on the first line communicates the best
Hang the quote
Myriad(header) can be little bit smaller
NO widow!!

Last In-Class Critique:

In-Class Feedbacks

“Myriad” for the right header can be smaller
“M” Drop cap can be larger to catch the attention
Can possibly explore more with this idea
Big “Myriad” letters naturally brings attention to the first part of the paragraph
Repetition of “m” and “a” on each corner works well

Revision During the Motion Project

Because my first draft video had this addition color palette, navy, I considered about adding this elegant color to my spread. I’ve also thought about exploring the random letters idea even further.

However, the more I tried different ideas and various methods, I kept thinking that it is going too far or too adventurous. Therefore, I decided to go back to the original spread where I did not add a new third color nor add new letters to it.