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Minotaur

Minotaur™

by CastleType
Individual Styles from $59.00 USD
Minotaur Font Family was designed by Jason Castle and published by CastleType. Minotaur contains 1 styles.

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About Minotaur Font Family


Minotaur is an original monoline design based on an Oscan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscan_language ) votive inscription from the second century B.C.E. The letterforms immediately caught my eye in the wonderful book, Lettering by Hermann Degering, and I decided to create a typeface based on them with only enough compromises to make it usable as a modern alphabet. Not quite as straightforward as I had hoped. For example, the Oscan language (the predominant language in the Italian peninsula before the ascendance of Latin), has no letter "O", so the distinctive curve of the "D" was used as the model for the rounded letters "C" and "G" and more subtly for "O" and "Q"; this shape is also echoed in the original design of "B", "P" and "R". Also, the Oscan letterforms for A, K, L, M, N, S, and U are rather quaint, so I've included modern forms as alternates. Minotaur offers the best of both worlds: Just as the mythical Minotaur is half man and half bull, the font Minotaur is half modern and half ancient. Thanks to OpenType features (stylistic sets), you can easily switch from ancient letterforms to modern (if you have an OpenType-savvy application such as Adobe InDesign) for Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets. Minotaur supports all modern European languages, including Modern (monotonic) Greek and those that use the Cyrillic alphabet. And, yes, it supports Oscan, both right-facing and left-facing. Minotaur includes 3 OpenType Stylistic Sets: 1 - converts ancient (default) letterforms (A, K, L, M, N, S, and U) to modern alternates; 2 - converts Latin letterforms to equivalent left-facing (standard) Oscan letterforms; 3 - converts Latin letterforms to equivalent right-facing Oscan letterforms.

Designers: Jason Castle

Publisher: CastleType

Foundry: CastleType

Design Owner: CastleType

MyFonts debut: Apr 14, 2009

Minotaur™ is a trademark of CastleType.

About CastleType

CastleType, an independent digital type foundry, with “some of the best display fonts available” (MacBible, 4th Edition), has been supplying designers with quality fonts since 1990. With over 100 fonts in 50 font families, CastleType has a very diverse collection, including many art deco revivals, classic type styles inspired by ancient sources, non-alphabetic decorative fonts, as well as many CastleType Originals. CastleType also does custom type design. Clients have included Chevron Corporation, Shiseido, Rolling Stone Magazine, etc.

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