Myriad is similar to Adrian Frutiger's famous Frutiger typeface, although the italic is a true italic unlike Frutiger's oblique Frutiger described it as 'not badly done' but felt that the similarities had gone 'a little too far'. Twombly described the design process as one of swapping ideas to create a 'homogeneous' design but said that in retrospect she found the experience 'too hard' to want to repeat.

As a family intended for body text and influenced by traditional book printing, text figures are included as well as lining figures at cap height. The 'g' is single-storey and the 'M' has sloped sides on the model of Roman square capitals. Its letterforms are open rather than 'folded-up' on the nineteenth-century grotesque sans-serif model, and its sloped form is a ' true italic' based on handwriting. Myriad is a humanist sans-serif, a relatively informal design taking influences from handwriting. Myriad is easily distinguished from other sans-serif fonts due to its 'y' descender (tail) and slanting 'e' cut. Myriad is known for its usage by Apple Inc., replacing Apple Garamond as Apple's corporate font from April 29, 2002, to January 24, 2017.

Myriad was intended as a neutral, general-purpose typeface that could fulfill a range of uses and have a form easily expandable by computer-aided design to a large range of weights and widths. Myriad is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Robert Slimbach and Carol Twombly for Adobe Systems.

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