The Lucida™ suite of fonts is one of the original super families, and remains one of the largest. Designed by Holmes and Bigelow in 1985, it was developed to work on bitmapped display screens and within laser printers. In the years since, the Lucida font family has not lost any of its importance or usefulness. It continues to perform well in situations where other fonts might not, such as fax transmission, low resolution printing, small point sizes, and reversed-out of halftones.
The Lucida font shares proportions and weights between its serif and sans serif styles. Within serifed faces such as the Lucida Bright design, the inner forms are based on writing styles of the Italian Renaissance and have a more relaxed, hand-made rhythm than the rigid shapes of grotesque sans-serifs. The slab-serifed Lucida Fax font has the same large x height, clear letter shapes and open counters of the Lucida Bright font, but is more rugged, with heavier hairlines, and thicker slab shaped serifs and greater space between letters. As the sans serif complement to the Lucida design, the Lucida Sans font and brings a human look to the sans serif style. The large x-height, clear forms and open spacing of the Lucida Sans font family create a rhythmic, readable text at all sizes throughout a wide range of office and professional documents.
Throughout all weights of the Lucida super family, the strong shapes and generous proportions are based on traditional Roman letterforms, making them clear and easy to read in the fine print of directories and parts lists, as well as clean and powerful in business correspondence and newsletters. .