Lucida (font)
Lucida /ˈluːsɪdə/[1] is an extended family of related typefaces designed by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes in 1985.
There are many variants called Lucida, including scripts (Blackletter, Calligraphy, Handwriting), serif (Fax, Bright), and sans-serif (Sans, Sans Unicode, Grande, Sans Typewriter).
Bigelow & Holmes, together with the (now defunct) TeX vendor Y&Y, extended the Lucida family with a full set of TeX mathematical symbols, making it one of the few typefaces that provide full-featured text and mathematical typesetting within TeX.
Lucida Arrows
It is a family of fonts containing arrows.
Lucida Blackletter
Released in 1992, it is a family of cursive blackletter fonts.
Lucida Bright
Based on Lucida Serif, it features more contrasted strokes and serifs.
The font was first used as the text face for Scientific American magazine, and its letter-spacing was tightened to give it a slightly closer fit for use in two and three column formats.
Lucida Calligraphy
It is a script font family developed from Chancery cursive.
Lucida Casual
Released in 1994, it is a casual font similar to Lucida Handwriting, but without connecting strokes.
Lucida Console
It is a variant of Lucida Sans Typewriter with smaller line spacing, and added WGL4 character set.
Lucida Fax
Released in 1992, it is a slab serif font family derived from Lucida, designed for telefaxing.
Lucida Handwriting
It is a font designed to resemble informal cursive handwriting, derived from the cursive block lettering used in 15th and 16th century printing.[2]
Lucida Icons
It is a family of fonts for ornament and decoration uses. It contains ampersands, interrobangs, circled Lucida Sans numerals, etc.[3]
Lucida Math
It is a family of fonts for mathematical expressions. Lucida Math Extension contains only mathematical symbols. Lucida Math Italic contains Latin characters from Lucida Serif Italic, but with smaller line spacing, and added Greek letters. Lucida Math contains mathematical symbols, and blackletter (from Lucida Blackletter) and script letters in (from Lucida Calligraphy Italic) Letterlike Symbols region.
In addition to the above fonts, mathematical fonts for Lucida Bright, Lucida Sans, Lucida Sans Mono were also developed, as well as Lucida Math One, Lucida Math Two, Lucida Math Three, which contain only mathematical symbols.
Lucida OpenType
First released in March 2012, this collection includes OpenType math fonts in regular and bold weights, and Lucida Bright, Lucida Sans Typewriter, and Lucida Sans text fonts in the usual four variants (regular, italic, bold, bold italic). The regular math font includes an entirely new math script alphabet in Roundhand style, among other new characters. The text fonts include Ogonek characters and other characters for (Latin-based) eastern European languages, again among others.
Lucida Sans
It is a family of sans-serif fonts complementing Lucida Serif, designed in 1985.
Lucida Grande
It is a version of Lucida Sans with expanded character sets. It supports Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai scripts.
Lucida Sans Typewriter
Also called Lucida Typewriter Sans, It is a sans-serif monospaced font family, designed for typewriters. Its styling is reminiscent of Letter Gothic and Andalé Mono; a variant, Lucida Console (see above), replaced those two fonts on Microsoft Windows systems.
Lucida Sans Unicode
Based on Lucida Sans Regular, it added characters in Arrows, Block Elements, Box Drawing, Combining Diacritical Marks, Control Pictures, Currency Symbols, Cyrillic, General Punctuation, Geometric Shapes, Greek and Coptic, Hebrew, IPA Extensions, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B, Letterlike Symbols, Mathematical Operators, Miscellaneous Symbols, Miscellaneous Technical, Spacing Modifier Letters, Superscripts and Subscripts regions.
Lucida Serif
It is the original Lucida font designed in 1985, featuring a thickened serif. It was simply called Lucida when it was first released.
Lucida Typewriter Serif
Also called Lucida Typewriter, it is a slab serif monospaced version of Lucida Fax, but with wider serifs. The letters are wider than Lucida Sans Typewriter.
Usages
Lucida Console is also the Blue Screen of Death (as well as Notepad default) typeface in Windows XP and Windows CE. Lucida Sans Demibold (Identical outlines to Lucida Grande Bold but with tighter spacing of numerals) is used in Apple Inc.'s Mac OS X operating system, as well as many programs including Front Row. Lucida is also used in the logo for Air Canada. A collection of Lucida variants are installed by default with Java. Lucida Calligraphy was used in the logo for Gladden Entertainment.
In April 2012, Lucida Sans was selected by GfK Blue Moon as the font for a package design as part of a proposed law in Australia banning logos on cigarette packaging. The proposed law requires cigarettes to be sold in dark olive-brown packages that depict graphic images of the effects of smoking and the cigarette's brand printed in Lucida Sans. According to Tom Delaney, a senior designer with New York design consultant Muts & Joy, "Lucida Sans is one of the least graceful sans-serif typefaces designed. It’s clumsy in its line construction."[4] In August 15, 2012, the Australian government approved the ban on cigarette logos, effectively replacing them with the unattractive packaging.[5]
See also
References
- ↑ Wells, John (2008-05-02). "World atlas of language structures". John Wells’s phonetic blog. Retrieved 2008-09-19.
- ↑ "Microsoft Typography: Lucida Handwriting". Retrieved 2014-01-03.
- ↑ Lucida Sans descriptions
- ↑ Boyle, Matthew (2012-04-22). "Consumers Buy Death in Australia's Cigarette Packaging Law". BusinessWeek. Retrieved 2012-04-23.
- ↑ McGuirk, Rod (2012-08-15). "AP News: Australian Court OKs Ban on Cigarette Packs". Associated Press. Retrieved 2012-08-15.
External links
- Lucida and TeX (TeX Users Group)
- Lucida Font Family Group - by Kris Holmes, Charles Bigelow (Linotype corporation)
- Notes on Lucida, by Charles Bigelow
- Lucida Family Overview by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes
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