A face for all sizes of expression

Lifted from MyFonts’ February newsletter | Miniscule Specimen

At MyFonts, we like people who take risks; we appreciate the courage of type designers who go where no type designer has gone before. One such pioneer is Frenchman Thomas Huot-Marchand, whose amazing text typeface Minuscule came out last December.

Minuscule was specially developed for setting texts at 6-point and smaller – down to 2-point, which is about the size of a footnote in a matchbox-size bible. Having thoroughly tested reading behavior at these extreme sizes, Huot-Marchand realized that with each step down, legibilty decreases so quickly that it was necessary to design a separate master (or basic drawing) for each point size. He developed five versions, optimized for a use in 6 (Minuscule Six), 5 (Cinq), 4 (Quatre), 3 (Trois) and 2 points (Deux).

All versions of Minuscule share the same characteristics: large x-height, robust slab serifs, vertical stress, open structure, big counters, low contrast. However, as the designated point size get smaller, the forms become more pronouced and elemental. At 2-point, the o is just a tiny black square… and it works!

To fully appreciate Minuscule, the computer screen is not a great medium – you need to see it in print. A good way to test Minuscule is by printing the test specimen sheet on a good black-and-white laser printer using the highest possible resolution.

The main inspiration for the design of Minuscule was the work of Louis-Émile Javal, a brilliant 19th-century scientist and engineer whose theories about the way we see and read have had an enormous impact on more recent legibility studies. Minuscule is a unique tribute to a great inventor.