In 1931, The Times of London commissioned the Monotype Corporation, under the direction of Stanley Morison, to design a newspaper typeface.

According to Morison: “The Times, as a newspaper in a class by itself, needed not a general trade type, however good, but a face whose strength of line, firmness of contour, and economy of space fulfilled the specific editorial needs of The Times.” Times New Roman, drawn by Victor Lardent and initially released in 1932, was the result.

Research into legibility and readability led to a design that was unique in newspaper typography; it was based on old style (or Garalde) types, had greater contrast, and was more condensed than previous newspaper types.

When the London Times, for whom Monotype designed Times New Roman, switched to machine-set type, they used Linotype equipment. Monotype licensed Times New Roman to Linotype, who optimized it for the new technology. Adobe’s main Times Roman font family uses Linotype’s 12-point design. There are a variety of differences between the Linotype and Monotype cuts of Times, though most are very subtle.

Adobe’s Times Phonetic typefaces, sold as a separate group, are based on the Linotype Times Roman. They comprise linguistic symbols, letters, and diacritical marks for use in dictionaries, language guides, linguistics texts, or wherever else spoken sounds need to be typographically represented. Times Phonetic is optimized for use at small settings (8-point) to work well in dictionaries, but works well at normal text sizes as well.

Both the Linotype and Monotype versions of Times continue to be very popular, particularly for newspapers, magazines, and corporate communications such as proposals and annual reports.