Hi all.
I would like to download the ‘Minon Pro’ font to use as my score text font. I’ve never downloaded a font before - except for from Notation Central - and when I search google, some of the sites look a little suspect. Can anyone recommend a good site to download the font?
Thanks!
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Note that Minion is a commercial font and must be purchased – it’s not available for free download.
Thanks.
For those of you who use this font (or maybe similar fonts) which styles do you recommend I buy - keeping in mind I’m going to use this for score text - not title, composer, staff names, etc.
Obviously ‘regular’ and ‘italic’. Is semi-bold more useful than bold? Any need for condensed when I can use letter spacing and font stretch in Doric?
Thanks!
My $0.02:
Instead of Minion Pro, try Minion 3, which is newer and cheaper. (I don’t know why it’s cheaper, maybe someone else does.)
I would suggest Standard Regular/Italic/Semibold/Semibold Italic/Bold/Bold Italic. I find that I use the semibold and bold for different things in the score.
I found a free font that looks similar to Minion. How about this?
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Thanks. Think I’ll go with Minion 3.
I’ve always had a question. What the difference between using the specific “XXX Bold” font, and just using the regular “XXX” font and checking the bold icon?
On Windows, it’s a little complicated. The majority of fonts only have regular/italic/bold/bold italic variants. Each of those has its own font file. In most apps, when you tick ‘Bold’, the app automatically uses the bold file.
For complex fonts like Minion – again, in most Windows apps – ticking ‘Bold’ will actually select the semibold font; the actual Bold font shows up as its own entry (Minion Bold/regular style, as opposed to Minion/bold style).
Some apps will actually display all of these under Minion, so you’ll see Minion semibold and Minion bold. I believe this is how things are handled on Mac by default.
It’s also the case that some fonts only have a regular variant, or maybe a regular and an italic. In that case, when you tick ‘Bold’, the software fakes the bold by making the font heavier; it’s not the same as a properly designed bold or semibold.
Crimson is quite good, and is an excellent free alternative to Minion.
Crimson, does look good. Do you like Crimson Text or Crimson Pro?
Pro just means it has an extended set of glyphs, usually. I use Crimson Pro.
Depending on what you’re doing, I’d recommend using Minion’s “caption” optical variant for most score elements. Personally, I use caption medium/medium italic for staff text and regular bold for system text. Semibold is handy to have as it can be useful in certain situations.
Crimson is a great free alternative, but Crimson Text might be a bit light at smaller sizes. I believe Crimson Pro is a bit thicker.
I like a lot of premium fonts myself, but couldn’t jsutify any one of them on their own. I actually pay for an Adobe InCopy subscription (which I have never used or installed) just for Adobe Fonts access. In the US, it’s $5/mo — MyFonts has Minion 3 and Minion Pro at a combined $878 which is over a decade of my subscription, so it’s one of the rare times/places I feel alright about a subscription.
It does come at the expense of occasionally running Adobe’s awful Creative Cloud software to manage those fonts, but I use a lot of Adobe fonts (both in Dorico and other projects where I teach) so I find it to be the right compromise.
Amen. Glad to see some awareness of different weights for different sizes.
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Thanks for the info. So for staff text (cresc., dolce, etc) you use Minion Caption Medium, and for System text (Allegro non tropo, etc) you use Minion Caption Bold?
The “Caption” set of optical sizes are designed for small type, usually between 7 and 9pt. So it is ideal for lyrics, which are usually set at 12pt (but scaled down with the staff size to about 9pt).
Perhaps you would also use Caption for things like “espressivo”, but for Tempo marks, system text, and anything around 12pt, then you’re back in “Normal” optical size territory.
Subhead is designed for … well, headings between c. 14 - 24 pt, and Display sizes are for 25 to 72 pt.
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Great info @benwiggy
Jesper
@benwiggy is correct—system and tempo text (which I generally keep between 12-14pt absolute) does not use the caption variant. Also, if I’m working on something like a solo piano piece where I’m keeping the staff size close to 7mm, I will switch staff text from caption to regular since it isn’t scaled down.