Kris Holmes | |
|---|---|
 Holmes in 2011 | |
| Born | 1950 (age 75–76) |
| Alma mater | Harvard University,UCLA Film School |
| Known for | Graphic design,Type design |
| Awards | 2012 Goudy Award |
Kris Holmes (born 1950,Reedley, California) is an American typeface designer,calligrapher, type design educator andanimator. She, withCharles Bigelow, is the co-creator of theLucida andWingdings font families, among many other typeface designs. She is President and Co-Founder of Bigelow & Holmes Inc., a typeface design studio.[1]
Holmes grew up on a farm inParlier, California. The nearest hospital was in Reedley, so she was born there.[2]AtReed College inPortland, Oregon, Holmes studied calligraphy with Calligrapher Laureate of OregonLloyd J. Reynolds[3] and modern dance with Judy Massee.[4][5] In New York, she then continued her education by studying lettering withEd Benguiat as well as modern dance at the Martha Graham and Alwin Nikolais schools.[6] She later studied calligraphy and typeface design withHermann Zapf at theRochester Institute of Technology.[2] She received a B.A. fromHarvard University and an MFA fromUCLA Film School in Animation.[7]
Holmes has taught at the Rochester Institute of Technology in both the Graphic Design[8] and the Film Departments,Portland State University, theMuseum Art School (Portland),Rhode Island School of Design,Santa Monica College, and theOtis College of Art and Design.[6]
By far the most well-known typeface design created by Bigelow & Holmes isLucida. Bigelow and Holmes have written extensively about its original conception and subsequent evolution.[9]
Notable projects include the design ofLucida Grande, at one time the system font forApple Computer'sOS X Operating System and the creation of the core fonts of theJava 2 language and developer kit forSun Microsystems. These multilingual fonts cover five scripts, including Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew and Arabic, and twelve styles, comprising 10,000 characters in all. Other computer platform clients include theMicrosoft Corporation, Sun Microsystems’Solaris division, andLucent Technologies. Font designs include:Microsoft Wingdings (Windows 95 and98),[10]Lucida Console (Windows NT),TrueTypeChicago,Monaco,Geneva,New York, AppleChancery,Textile,Capitals (Macintosh OS),Lucida Unicode (Java, Solaris, andLucentInferno). Font designs have been additionally licensed byAdobe Systems,Agfa Corporation,ITC,Hewlett-Packard,Linotype Library,Monotype Typography, and theTeX Users Group.[11] Lucida is also available from Bigelow & Holmes' own web site.[12]
As the principal artist at Bigelow & Holmes, Holmes is responsible for the creation of over 100 digital typefaces, including conception, research, drawing, computer input, digital editing, and production management. Her illustrations have appeared inScientific American,The Seybold Report,Computer Graphics,Fine Print and other publications. She has designed signage forGhirardelli Square, San Francisco andWalter Lantz Studio, UCLA. Her work is included in the permanent collection of theKlingspor Museum, Germany and theCary Graphic Arts Collection,Rochester Institute of Technology.
Kris Holmes received the 2012 RITFrederic W. Goudy Award for excellence in typography and gave the keynote address at the 2012 RIT Reading Digital Symposium.[13]
Her screenplay,Vavilov,[14] won a 2002UCLASloan Foundation Student Film Award. She is the creator of the animated filmLa Bloomba,[15] which was awarded a First Prize in theChloroFilms 2009 contest.[16] She has created many other animated films.[17]
Samples of many of these typefaces are available online.[18]
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| Other | |
