Lithos

Lithos is a sans-serif font that was designed to mimick the letterforms used on Ancient Greek buildings. It only contains capital letters. Does it come as a surprise that Lithos made it to my list of interesting fonts?

What does Lithos look like?

Lithos Pro Extra Light
Lithos Pro Extra Light
Lithos Pro Light
Lithos Pro Light
Lithos Pro Regular
Lithos Pro Regular
Lithos Pro Black
Lithos Pro Black

What do you use Lithos for?

Use it to create a playful, exotic or primitive atmosphere in display jobs such as posters or flyers. Lithos is only meant to be used for titles, it is not suitable for body text.

In select cases, Papyrus can be an alternative to Lithos but you have to take into consideration that Papyrus gets used inappropriately way too much. You could also try Rusticana.

The history of Lithos

In 1989 the American typeface designer Carol Twombly designed Lithos for Adobe. She later also worked on Adobe Caslon and Myriad (together with Robert Slimbach.) Lithos Pro, released in 2000, added small caps and small figures as well as true Greek language support.

Trivia

Many books about African Americans and Southwestern cultures use Lithos for its ‘ethnic’ feel, even though it is the wrong ethnicity.

Other sources of information

There is a Wikipedia page on Lithos.

3 thoughts on “Lithos

  1. You’ve provided very good information. I’m a Technology Education Teacher at Mount Tabor High School. One of the classes I teach is communications. Our mascot is a Spartan, The Spartans; we are Sparta, that whole line. I’ve been looking for a type font to pitch to the Athletic and Arts Boosters. They do everything in Arial or Times New Roman. I want to bang my head against a wall. I liked Lithos, but I love Rusticana. Do you know of any other type fonts along the Ancient Greek Theme?

  2. I have a question regarding Lithos Pro Regular –
    My graphic artist selected this font for use in my logo.

    How can I confirm whether this font can be used for the design of our web page, BEFORE I purchase it?

    Thank you so much for your assistance!

    All the best,

    Sue

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