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ABOUT

Robert Slimbach

After a start at Autologic in Newbury Park in 1983, this prolific American master craftsman (b. Evanston, IL, 1956) helped pioneer digital type design at Adobe (which he joined in 1987) and created

• ITC Slimbach (1987).
• ITC Giovanni Book (1988).
• Adobe Garamond (1989-1991).
• Adobe Jenson (1996) and Adobe Jenson Pro. Combining Nicolas Jenson's roman designs with Ludovico degli Arrighi's italics.
• Utopia (1989-1991) [Utopia Opticals was released in 2002].
• Minion (1990-1991): Minion was first released in 1990, and became later the first Adobe Opentype font. It has support for Greek and Cyrillic, including polytonic Greek. Minion Cyrillic is from 1992. By 2021, this text typeface featured 32 styles, and was published as Minion3.
• Myriad (1992, with Carol Twombly). Myriad Arabic and Myriad Hebrew were first published in 2011.
• Poetica (1992). In 2010, Paulo Heitlinger compared Poetica, in its smooth perfection, with P22 Operina, which is closer to the original chancery models of the 20th century, and he thinks Poetica lacks the vigor and dynamism of the originals (and P22 Operina does not).
• Sanvito (1993).
• Caflisch Script (1993, not my favorite script).
• Cronos (1996). Image by Jamie Groenestein). modeled after Kuester's Today Sans. Image of Cronos Pro Display.
• Kepler (1996).
• Warnock Pro (2000), which won an award at the Type Directors Club (TDC2) 2001 competition.
• Brioso (2002). A calligraphic/renaissance family comprised of over 40,000 glyphs. Images of Brioso: A poster by Kristina Reinholds, a poster by Nick di Stefano.
• Garamond Premier Pro (2005), based on originals found in the Plantin Museum in Antwerp. Weights include GaramondPremPro-BdItalic, GaramondPremPro-Bold GaramondPremPro-Italic, GaramondPremPro-Medium, GaramondPremPro-MediumIt, GaramondPremPro-Regular, GaramondPremPro-SbIt, GaramondPremPro-Semibold. Greek, Latin and Cyrillic are covered.
• Arno Pro (2007: typophile discussion) is in the style of Adobe Jenson Pro. Review by Typographica Thomas Phinney: Arno is what you might call a modernized Venetian oldstyle. I think of it as having the same relationship to Adobe Jenson that Minion has to Garamond Premier.
• Adobe Clean (2009). David Lemon: After more than 25 years in the type development business, Adobe decided to have its own corporate typeface family. The Creative Suite uses were early versions of a family designed by Robert Slimbach. Now that it has been officially adopted at Adobe, I can tell you about our latest design, called Adobe Clean. There is no plan to make it available for licensing, but you will be seeing more of it in Adobe materials and products as time goes on. Our initial question was "Why not just keep using Myriad Pro and Minion Pro?" These typefaces were designed to be timeless, and they are among our most popular families. But that second part points to the catch in this situation: Myriad, in particular, is used to represent many other companies, including businesses close to Adobe's (such as Apple and Verizon). Adobe wanted a fresh look that could remain unique. While some typeface designers do much of their work for corporate clients, this area was new to us. Robert&I met with the leaders of Adobe's Experience Design and Brand teams to develop a design brief. They wanted a 21st-century feel combined with an earnest readability. As the project grew, Christopher Slye led regular follow-up meetings with the client teams to keep them up to date and tease more input out of them. Robert's accustomed to aiming his work at the more general case, so it was an interesting challenge to have a very specific set of design goals. What he produced is as classic as all his other designs, but with an uncharacteristic blend of contemporary touches for on-screen rendering and a more progressive feel.
• Adobe Text (2010), a transitional family included in the standard font set for Adobe Creative Suite 5. Adobe Text won an award at Modern Cyrillic 2014.
• Adobe Hand (2012). Adobe Hand also won an award at Modern Cyrillic 2014.
• Trajan Pro 3 (2011, with Carol Twombly) and Trajan Sans (1989). The Trajan Sans family comprises six weights, ranging from Extra Light to Black (matching the weight range in Trajan Pro 3), with language coverage for Pan-European Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek. Maxim Zhukov advised on the design of the Cyrillic portion of the family, and Gerry Leonidas advised on the Greek, while Frank Grießhammer provided technical production support. Trajan Sans won an award at Modern Cyrillic 2014.
• Ryoko Nishizuka designed Ten Mincho (2017), a Japanese typeface in the Adobe Originals collection. Ten Mincho also features a full set of Latin glyphs, collectively known as Ten Oldstyle and designed by Robert Slimbach.
• Pelago (2017). A semi-formal sans family that won an award at TDC Typeface Design 2018.
• Acumin. A 90-style neo-grotesque typeface family.

For Warnock Pro, he got an award at the Type Directors Club (TDC2) 2001 competition. In 1991, he received the Prix Charles Peignot for excellence in type design. Minion Pro Greek, Minion Pro Cyrillic&Greek and Brioso Pro won awards at the TDC2 Type Directors Club's Type Design Competition 2002. At TDC2 2006, he won an award for Garamond Premier Pro. Arno Pro won an award at the TDC2 2007 competition. In 2018, he received the Frederic W. Goudy Award for Typographic Excellence at Rochester Institute of Technology. Bio at Linotype. Minion Pro now ships with Acrobat Reader and covers all European languages, including Greek and Cyrillic.

View Robert Slimbach's typefaces. FontShop link.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Robert Slimbach
 [Designer info]
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Klingspor Museum page
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INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Greek/Coptic ⦿ Cyrillic type design ⦿ Type scene in California ⦿ Type scene in Illinois ⦿ Corporate typefaces ⦿ Chancery hand, cancellaresca ⦿ Garalde or Garamond typefaces ⦿ Typefaces and type design for Arabic ⦿ Hebrew font links ⦿ Typefaces inspired by the Trajan column in Rome ⦿