Name: Centaur Now
Type: Retail typeface
Publisher: Monotype
Release year: 2025
Purchase links: MyFonts (Static) Myfonts (Variable)
Centaur Now is a new revival of Centaur, a Venetian roman typeface originally designed by Bruce Rogers and Frederic Warde.
Centaur was one of the most gracefully designed typefaces at the time in my opinion, lacking straight lines almost entirely (in the upright). Designed by the seasoned typographers duo, it was expertly crafted for fine book typography. For more info on the typeface and designers, I recommend the following: The Noblest Roman: A History of the Centaur Types of Bruce Rogers (Jerry Kelly), The Centaur Types (Bruce Rogers), Bruce Rogers: A Life in Letters, 1870-1957 (Joseph Bumenthal), and Printer's Devil: The Life and Work of Frederic Warde (Simon Loxley).
Centaur was unfortunately digitised in the early digital era when quantity mattered more than quality. While the digital Centaur wasn’t drawn badly, the original metal version was designed intentionally frail in anticipation of the letterpress process that would thicken the letterforms. According to Blumenthal, Rogers’s favourite texture was 14 point Centaur printed on soft and damp paper with good amount of ink spread. This wasn’t taken into account while digitising it, and was traced out of production drawings. In other words, the digital version was much thinner than it should have been. (Bold & Bold Italic was added at this point. The lining numerals were added here too, but the original designs were already drawn in the 30s)
Me and Centaur have a long history. It’s my first love and still one of my favourite typefaces. I first came across Centaur when I was studying in uni and chose to digitise it on my own for my graduation project. I bought 14pt from M&H Type, and printed it on damp sheets of paper. This effort was shown at the graduation show but never published.
(You can probably tell from my Reading MATD project that I have a thing for early romans)
I later joined Monotype, the perfect setup, and worked on a lot of revivals while looking for the opportunity for Centaur. One might think I would have done Centaur much earlier if it was supposedly my favourite, but Centaur was a hard typeface to sell; as Robin Nicholas used to say to me, it was a typeface that everyone admires but almost no one uses. Nevertheless, I got the green light in the end.
The core idea of Centaur was to address the thickness problem. Robin told me there was a standardised anticipated ink spread in Monotype’s Type Drawing Office, in other words, the thickness value by which the outlines would be offset. I started with the production drawings, applied a similar amount of thickening, and modified the details to give more letterpress flavour but not to crazy extent like adding paper texture.
The secondary purpose was to support optical sizes. The Monotype Centaur was drawn in four separate sets of optical sizes: 6pt, 8–9pt, 12–18pt, and 18pts upwards, and I decided to digitise three, skipping the 8–9pt. Upright was a fairly straightforward affair while the italic posed more challenge on the smaller end. The original italic was proportioned the same as in text (with short ascenders and descenders), too narrow and tight for caption. I made the letterforms wider and spacing looser.
Lastly, the alternates; Centaur was a typeface that started out years before and outside Monotype, and had a few other names such as Montaigne, and Arrighi for its italic, looking slightly different from one another. Some letters were quite different, such as the curly tail of y in the earlier versions. In my Centaur, I wanted to include alternate letters that were inspired by them. The major part of the effort is found in the italic which features the letterforms inspired by Vicenzo and original Arrighi.
It has been a fantastic experience, after almost 20 years, to be able to come back to my favourite typeface and release it in the official capacity. One bucket list item checked! And I cannot wait to spot the new Centaur in full glory.