The Nimrod font was designed by British font designer Robin Nichols between 1978 and 1980 for Monotype specifically for newspapers and small ads. Nichols is a prolific font designer and the Head of Typography for the United Kingdom at Monotype and is probably best known for his creation of the Ariel font face. The font was created with the changes in technology seen by the newspaper industry in the 1980s in mind, primarily the move to digital and subsequent need for a simpler and easier to read body text.

In the late 1980s it was used in the redesign of several prominent British newspapers including the London Guardian. 1990 saw it as a primary font for the Oxford Dictionary redesign and in 2007 it was prominently used for the revamp of the Canadian daily newspaper The Globe and Mail.

With its simple design the Nimrod is a font that is a favorite with many publications. The London Guardian Newspaper decided to change to the Nimrod font during the redesign in the late 1980s and kept it as the primary font until another redesign in 1998. It was first used as a body text font by the Leicester Mercury Newspaper.

Because of the fonts ability to retain clear visibility in small type the font was also used as the primary font for the 1990 edition of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary. The 2007 redesign of the Canadian national newspaper The Globe and Mail also included Nimrod as one of its primary body text fonts.