| Date: 1985
Designer:
Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes
Foundry:
Linotype / Elsner and Flake / Adobe / Monotype
Location:
Menlo Park, California, USA
Current equivalent:
Lucida
See also:
ITC Rotis, ITC Stone, Thesis family; The Sans, The Serif, The Mix
Technologies:
Photosetting
Postscript
Opentype | | Famous for:
First type to be designed for imaging on low-resolution laser printers.
Applications: Book Publishing & General Purpose Text Setting
Ubiquity:
Very widely used
Category:
Postmodern Sans / Serif Hybrid Family
Stress: Vertical
Serif: Slab | | Design history:
Based on Bigelow and Holmes' extensive backgrounds in letterform and legibility research studies, the original Lucida design has a vertical stress, a generous x-height and a small slab serif. Since then Lucida has evolved into a large and comprehensive hybrid family; within three years Bigelow and Holmes produced Pellucida for low-resolution video displays, the monospaced Lucida Typewriter, and the text face of the Scientific American, Lucida Bright. Later came variants encompassing handwriting, blackletter, sans serif, italic and fax-optimised styles – eighty separate digital fonts in total. Widely licensed and distributed, Lucida is a typographic staple of the digital age. | |  |
