Literaturnaya (russian: Литерату́рная гарниту́ра or simply ) is a

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are list of type ...

, created in the

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. Designed at Poligraphmash () at the end of the 1930s by Anatolii Shchukin (), the font was based on Hermann Berthold's Latinskaya (

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, 1901), a version of Lateinisch for Russia, also developed at the Berthold foundry (

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

, 1899). The digital version of Literaturnaya was developed at ParaGraph () foundry in 1996 by

Lyubov Kuznetsova Lyubov A. Kuznetsova (Russian: Любовь Алексеевна Кузнецова; 1928 – February 22, 2008) was a Russian calligrapher and font designer. The official digital version of the Literaturnaya font was developed at ParaGraph in 19 ...

. Also, there was an unofficial digital version, created in 1992 by an unknown author (sometimes credited as !22! Soft).

Use and popularity

Literaturnaya was mostly used in the USSR,

Bulgaria Bulgaria (; bg, България, Bǎlgariya), officially the Republic of Bulgaria,, ) is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern flank of the Balkans, and is bordered by Romania to the north, Serbia and North Macedon ...

and other

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

countries from its creation in the late 1930s to the early 1990s. (the last examples of prints, set in it date back to 1995) and was standard Cyrillic typeface during this period of time. It was informally called "The favourite font of Russian typographers". Most of the 1950–1990 books were set in Literaturnaya typeface. It was also used in some magazines, newspapers, brochures, written advertisements and journals. After the split of the Soviet Union, the font was replaced with the more popular

Times New Roman Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration wit ...

. As of 2009, Literaturnaya is rarely (almost never) used, although there are some indications that its popularity is increasing among Russians. Literaturnaya also started appearing in decorative titles in East European countries such as

References

ParaType

External links

— a Russian language page, containing some info about Literaturnaya. Transitional serif typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in the 1940s {{typ-stub

Use and popularity

See also

References

External links