Lithos is a glyphic

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...

typeface designed by Carol Twombly in 1989 for

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

. Lithos is inspired by the unadorned, geometric letterforms of the engravings found on Ancient Greek public buildings. The typeface consists of only capital letters, no lowercase, and comes in five weights, without italics. According to Twombly, Lithos only used Greek inscriptions as inspiration, making Lithos more of a modern reinterpretation than a faithful reproduction. Twombly also designed Trajan and Charlemagne based respectively on ancient Roman and Byzantine inscriptions. Those typefaces, unlike Lithos, were modeled more directly upon their historical counterparts. One example of Lithos' departure from historical accuracy is the inclusion of bold weights, which never existed in historical Greek inscriptions.

Lithos Pro

In 2000, Adobe released the OpenType version called Lithos Pro, which included Adobe CE, Adobe Western 2, Greek character sets support, and

small caps In typography, small caps (short for "small capitals") are characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. This is technicall ...

in the lowercase positions. OpenType features include alternates, case forms, proportional lining figures, small caps.

Lithos in popular culture

Lithos was the resident typeface of

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Lithos is also used in the title typeface of the Very Short Introductions published by Oxford University Press. Lithos is used in the California State Parks logo. Lithos is used in the ''

Banjo-Kazooie ''Banjo-Kazooie'' is a series of video games developed by Rare (company), Rare. The games feature a male bear named Banjo & Kazooie, Banjo and his friend, a large female red bird named Banjo & Kazooie, Kazooie, who are both controlled by the p ...

'' game logo.

References

{{reflist *Giampietro, Rob
"New Black Face"
''Giampietro+Smith Studio'' taken from ''Letterspace'' Fall/Winter 2004. Retrieved May 30, 2007. Archived February 4, 2012.

''Adobe.com''. Retrieved May 30, 2007. Adobe typefaces Sans-serif typefaces Incised typefaces Display typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1989 Typefaces designed by Carol Twombly