Centaur is an elegant and quite slender design, lighter on the page than Jenson's work and most other revivals, an effect possibly amplified in the digital release compared to the metal type.

[4][a] Centaur also shows the influence of types cut by Francesco Griffo in 1495 for a small book titled De Aetna written by Pietro Bembo.

The typeface is classified as belonging to the humanist style of old-style designs, based on the predominant influence of Jenson's work.

In the late nineteenth century, Jenson's work had become a popular model for William Morris and then other fine printers of the Arts and Crafts movement.

[4][17] The completed family was released for general use in 1929, with a first showing in Monotype's specimen booklet The Trained Printer and the Amateur by Alfred W.

American Type Founders' Cloister Old Style was created by its design team led by Morris Fuller Benton around 1915, during the same period as Centaur.

[31] American Type Founders also issued a very eccentric Jenson revival inspired by the work of Morris which is little-known today.

[32] Tobias Frere-Jones created a revival in 1994 named Hightower Text that is bundled with some Microsoft software, adding his own italic design.

[33] Outside its common uses, Centaur is also used for the wordmark of John Varvatos and in the children's book Crispin: The Cross of Lead, set in the Middle Ages.