Miller is closely related to Carter's previous Scotch Roman revival, the very popular Georgia family for Microsoft.

The Miller family was designed by Matthew Carter and developed with the assistance of the Font Bureau's Tobias Frere-Jones and Cyrus Highsmith,[10] and the encouragement of James Mosley, a librarian at the St Bride Library of the history of printing in London.

[13][2][14] Although Miller remains faithful to the Scotch Roman style, it is not based on any single historical example.

[15] The flat-topped lowercase "t" is not original to Miller's or Wilson's types, but a "wrong font" Didone sort introduced later — possibly by mistake — that became entrenched in the style in the latter half of the 19th century.

[17]Speaking in 2013 about the development of Georgia and Miller, Carter said, "I was familiar with Scotch Romans, puzzled by the fact that they were once so popular...and then they disappeared completely.

[17] A 2005 survey by Ascender Corporation found Miller to be the tenth most popular typeface featured in American newspapers.