Lucida

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 is still licensed commercially through the TUG store^[2] as well through their own web store.^[3] The fonts are occasionally updated.

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

Released in 1992, it is a script font family developed from Chancery cursive. In 2014, Bigelow & Holmes released additional weights in normal and narrow widths.

Lucida Casual

Released in 1994, it is a casual font similar to Lucida Handwriting, but without connecting strokes. In 2014, Bigelow & Holmes released additional weights in normal and narrow widths.

Lucida Console

It is a variant of Lucida Sans Typewriter with smaller line spacing, and added WGL4 character set. In 2014, Bigelow & Holmes released bold weights and italics in normal and narrow widths. As of Windows 8, it is the default font for Notepad

Lucida Fax

Released in 1992, it is a slab serif font family derived from Lucida, designed for telefaxing.

Lucida Handwriting

Released in 1992, it is a font designed to resemble informal cursive handwriting with modern plastic-tipped or felt-tipped pens or markers. In 2014, Bigelow & Holmes added additional weights and widths to the family.

Lucida Icons

It is a family of fonts for ornament and decoration uses. It contains ampersands, interrobangs, circled Lucida Sans numerals, etc.^[4]

Lucida Math

Lucida Math 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 Lucida Bright text fonts include Unicode Latin character blocks including Basic Latin, Latin-1, and Latin Extended-A characters for American, Western European, Central European, Turkish, and other Latin-based orthographies.

Lucida Sans

It is a family of sans-serif fonts complementing Lucida Serif, designed in 1985.

Lucida Grande

Main article: Lucida Grande

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

Main article: 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.

Lucida Teletext

Comes as a package of 3 fonts: "Lucida Teletext", "Lucida Teletext 43" and "Lucida Teletext 83" (All Regular weightings). It is a new typeface package designed by Lucida Corporation in alliance with Microsoft, that enabled the inclusion of their typefaces in Microsoft products. Both "Lucida Teletext 43" and Lucida Teletext 83" fonts were bundled with Microsoft Windows Media Center in both Windows 7 OS and Windows 8 OS, while "Lucida Teletext" font is distributed freely by Ascender Corporation under CC 3.0 licensing.

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."^[5] In August 15, 2012, the Australian government approved the ban on cigarette logos, effectively replacing them with the unattractive packaging.^[6]