Typeface · Other
Centaur
Centaur is a serif typeface by book and typeface designer Bruce Rogers, based on the Renaissance-period printing of Nicolas Jenson around 1470.
About Centaur
Centaur is a serif typeface by book and typeface designer Bruce Rogers, based on the Renaissance-period printing of Nicolas Jenson around 1470. He used it for his design of the Oxford Lectern Bible. It was given widespread release by the British branch of Monotype, paired with an italic designed by calligrapher Frederic Warde and based on the slightly later work of calligrapher and printer Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi. The italic has sometimes been named separately as the "Arrighi" italic. Centaur is an elegant and quite slender design, lighter on the page than Jenson's work and most other revivals, an effect possibly amplified in the digital release compared to the metal type. It has been popular in fine book printing and is often used both for printing body text and especially titles and headings.
From the Wikipedia article “Centaur (typeface)”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Using Centaur in a book
Test this typeface at both text and display sizes before committing; print a sample page at final size.
Commercial typefaces require a licence that covers embedding in PDFs and ebooks; check the foundry's licence before you publish.
Sources & data
- Structured data from Wikidata Q927717 (CC0).
- Summary text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).