I have developed this text typeface as the practical project during my studies for the MA in Typeface Design at the University of Reading, UK. Mina is a contemporary newspaper typeface with a sturdy and organic character. Robustness and strength help make Mina be a work horse. Its strong colour in text is ideally suited to high-speed printing conditions. A low stroke contrast gives the old style typeface almost the appearance of a slab serif. The serifs’ styles are calligraphic and asymmetric, as well as well-defined. Though heavy in weight, these serifs give the letterforms a lively character. This feature allows Mina to be the perfect partner for magazine typesetting. Mina is very legible in small text sizes and easy to read in long texts. The typeface is economic – its x-height is large, the capitals are low in height and its decenders are short. The Roman and the Italic’s lowercase letters have completely different designs. Nevertheless, they fit well together, especially because of the similarity of their inktraps. The Latin version of Mina was designed together with a Telugu (South India) version, also with newspaper printing in mind. The Telugu script’s extremely round shapes have played a large influence on the shapes of the Roman and the Italic. Mina’s Latin extended character set for the Regular, Italic and Bold – as well as the Telugu version – are still in progress. More pictures of the Mina specimen (20 pages) can be found on my flickr account (see url)
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