The Brazilian designer João Henrique Lopes has set his sights high and has undertaken never to create two kinds of typeface – typefaces that are ugly and typefaces that lack personality. In his view, there are already enough of these. It was with such high aspirations that he got down to designing Lucca.
Lopes used various Italian sans serif fonts, such as Poliphilus, Blado, Centaur and Arrighi, as models for the forms of his humanist grotesque Lucca. These exhibit marked contrasts in terms of line thickness and a characteristic attenuation in the stems. Slightly bevelled line terminals provide Lucca with additional dynamism.
Moreover, the forms of some of the bowls, such as those of the ‘p’, the ‘b’ and the ‘d’, have strokes that are more or less evocative of a calligraphic font, endowing Lucca with a somewhat historical aura.
Apart from a selection of standard ligatures, Lopes has provided alternative versions of the uppercase ‘Q’ and ‘R’ in which the ‘Q’ has a more restrained tail and the ‘R’ has been given a curved foot. The numerals are in the form of oldstyle figures.
Lucca is available in the two weights Regular and Bold. There are italic versions of both weights. The forms of these are fundamentally different to those of their upright counterparts and they are appreciably more angular. The semblance to a handwritten font is thus even more pronounced, so that Lucca Italic has a passing resemblance to blackletter. The ‘a’ has a closed form, the lowercase ‘f’ has a descender and the ‘k’ a curved outstroke. Provided as an alternative to the ‘g’ with its two closed counters is a letter in which the counters are open.
Lucca’s range of glyphs is further augmented by small caps that are available for all versions.
Lucca is a robust copy body font that can be used in a wide range of contexts thanks to its extensive assortment of characters. The forceful nature of the letters and their generous x-height mean they retain an excellent level of legibility even in problematic situations. Its historical feel together with its very distinctive and affable character give Lucca a manifest individuality that you too can use to give your projects that special touch.
