Peter Matthias Noordzij was studying at Koninklijke Academie vor Beeldende Kunsten in The Hague, Netherlands in 1983 when he created the first sketches of what eventually became the PMN Caecilia design.

Designed to represent the writing of a broad-nibbed pen, PMN Caecilia has curved, angled, and vertical strokes. When most people write, the direction and pressure of the pen change, but the angle of the pen in relation to the line usually does not. This idea was built in to the PMN Caecilia design.

Its current name comes from his initials (PMN stands for Peter Matthias Noordziji) and his wife’s name, Marie-Cecile Noordzij-Pulles. However, the typeface was originally called Academic, and was shown in a small exhibition at an Atypl conference in London. Bitstream, Monotype, and ITC all showed interest in the typeface before an agreement was signed with Linotype in 1986.

Peter worked closely with Werner Schimpf of Linotype, sharing ideas and feedback until the typeface was neared its publication/release date. By this time the name, the name Academic did not seem appropriate, and the new name was chosen. Linotype released the font family in 1991.

One of the most influential reading tools of the Information Age – the Amazon Kindle®–uses the PMN Caecilia font family as a standard.