Academy was designed circa 1910 at the Berthold type foundry (St.-Petersburg). It was based on Sorbonne (H. Berthold, Berlin, 1905), which represented the American Type Founders rework Cheltenham of 1896 (designers Bertram G. Goodhue, Morris F. Benton) and Russian typefaces of the mid-18th century. A low-contrast text typeface with historical flavor. The modern digital version was designed at Poligrafmash type design bureau in 1989 by Lyubov Kuznetsova. Corrections and additions were done later in ParaType in early 2000th. Reworked version with Bold Italic style was released in 2009.