The weight of Lucida Grande regular was intended to compensate for “erosion” on illuminated screen backgrounds as well as on white writing printers. The vertical stem thickness of Lucida Grande is 1/5.5 or 18% of x-height, whereas the stems of Helvetica Neue are approximately 16.4% of x-height. Lucida Grande Regular stem widths are approximately 10% heavier in weight than those of Helvetica Neue system. The x-heights don’t differ by more than a pixel until the combination of size and resolution reaches 150 pixels per em, which is nearly 50 points on a 15 inch MacBook 220 pixel per inch Retina display.įor comparison, here they are at 100 points. The difference is likely to be unnoticeable to all but the most meticulous screen font scrutinizers. The standard Helvetica Neue regular x-height is slightly shorter than that of Lucida Grande, but metric tweaking of Helvetica Neue desk interface (system) font increases just enough that its x-height on screen renders a tiny bit larger than that of Lucida Grande. The x-heights of Lucida Grande and Helvetica Neue “desk interface” regular are nearly identical. Lucida Sans is nearly identical to Lucida Grande, except for character sets, kerning, and a small amount of character modifications.ĭIFFERENCES BETWEEN LUCIDA GRANDE and HELVETICA NEUE Occasionally we refer also to Lucida Sans weights and styles, also on the B&H web site. However, when discussing italics and other weights that were not shipped with OS X, we refer instead to extant Lucida Grande styles and weights found on B&H’s web site. When we talk about Lucida Grande regular and bold weights, we usually mean the versions that were used as OS X system fonts and are still found in the font repertoire of OS X. Hence, although Lucida Grande is no longer the default system font family, it nevertheless influences the metrics of its replacement, like the ghosts of departed quantities. The difference is only around 1.5%, but the slight size increase brings Helvetica Neue closer to the x-height and width metrics of Lucida Grande. A difference between the standard and OS X “system” versions of Helvetica Neue is that the latter have been metrically tweaked to render slightly larger than the standard versions. When we talk here about Helvetica Neue, we generally mean the OS X desk interface or system versions unless we explicitly say otherwise. In OS X version 10.10, two families of Helvetica Neue can be found, a standard family and a special system or “desk interface” family. We discuss these in the sections that follow. There are apparent differences in readability. There are qualitative differences in aesthetics, graphical origins, and design classification.
There are measurable differences between Lucida Grande and Helvetica Neue in letter forms, letter spacing, letter widths, and other metrics. Both have system and non-system variants, though their character sets vary. Both have been system fonts on Macintosh OS X, though one in the past and one in the present. Both have double names, though of different meanings and origins.* Both are sans-serif typefaces, though of different design philosophies.
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