Myriad (typeface)

Myriad is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Robert Slimbach and Carol Twombly for Adobe Systems. Myriad was intended as a neutral, general-purpose typeface that could fulfill a range of uses and have a form easily expandable by computer-aided design to a large range of weights and widths.

Myriad is known for its usage by Apple Inc., replacing Apple Garamond as Apple's corporate font from April 29, 2002, to January 24, 2017. Myriad is easily distinguished from other sans-serif fonts due to its "y" descender (tail) and slanting "e" cut.

Myriad is a humanist sans-serif, a relatively informal design taking influences from handwriting. Its letterforms are open rather than "folded-up" on the nineteenth-century grotesque sans-serif model, and its sloped form is a "true italic" based on handwriting. The 'g' is single-storey and the 'M' has sloped sides on the model of Roman square capitals. As a family intended for body text and influenced by traditional book printing, text figures are included as well as lining figures at cap height. Twombly described the design process as one of swapping ideas to create a "homogeneous" design but said that in retrospect she found the experience "too hard" to want to repeat.

Myriad is similar to Adrian Frutiger's famous Frutiger typeface, although the italic is a true italic unlike Frutiger's oblique; Frutiger described it as "not badly done" but felt that the similarities had gone "a little too far". The later Segoe UI and Corbel are also similar.

Adobe’s first release of Myriad in 1992 was in the multiple master format, an ambitious format intended to allow the user to fine-tune weight, width and other characteristics of the design to their preferred form. The Multiple Master format was not well supported by third-party applications, and so most releases of Myriad have been in the form of separate font files. The concept behind Multiple Master fonts has since been redeveloped as part of the OpenType variable fonts technology.

This PostScript Type 1 font family was released after the original Myriad MM. It initially included four fonts in two weights, with complementary italics. All these Type 1 versions supported the ISO-Adobe character set; all were discontinued in the early 2000s.

Myriad Web is a version of Myriad in TrueType font format, optimized for onscreen use. It supports Adobe CE and Adobe Western 2 character sets. Myriad Web comprises only five fonts: Myriad Web Pro Bold, Myriad Web Pro Regular, Myriad Web Pro Condensed Italic, Myriad Web Pro Condensed, Myriad Web Pro Italic. Myriad Web Pro is slightly wider than Myriad Pro, while the width of Myriad Web Pro Condensed is between Myriad Pro Condensed and Myriad Pro SemiCondensed.

The family is bundled as part of the Adobe Web Type Pro font pack.