Chicago is a sans-serif font designed by Susan Kare for Apple Computer. It was used in the Macintosh operating system user interface between 1984 and 1997 and was an important part of Apple's brand identity. It is also used in the iPod user interface. While initially a bitmap font, Apple commissioned the type foundry Bigelow & Holmes to create a TrueType version, as the OS' capabilities improved. The typeface is, of course, named after the United States city of Chicago, Illinois. In typography, serifs are the small features at the end of strokes within letters. ... In typography, a typeface is a co-ordinated set of character designs, which usually comprises an alphabet of letters, a set of numerals and a set of punctuation marks. ... Susan Kare, PhD (from New York University (NYU) in Fine Arts), became the original designer of many of the interface elements for the original Apple Macintosh after she received a call from friend Andy Hertzfeld in 1983. ... Apple Computer, Inc. ... Original 1984 Mac OS desktop Current 2005 Mac OS X desktop Mac OS, which stands for Macintosh Operating System, is Apple Computer’s name for the first operating systems for Macintosh computers. ... An example of graphical user interface in Microsoft Windows XP An example of graphical user interface in Apples Mac OS X An example of one of the many X Windows graphical user interfaces available for Linux A graphical user interface (or GUI, sometimes pronounced gooey) is a method of... 1984 is a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... 1997 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... This article is about the concept in marketing. ... A grayscale fourth-generation iPod with earphones. ... An assortment of bitmap fonts from the first version of the Macintosh operating system A bitmap font is one that stores each glyph as an array of pixels (that is, a bitmap). ... TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobes Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. ... In computing, an operating system (OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. ... Chicago, Illinois — officially the City of Chicago and colloquially known as Chicago, the Second City and the Windy City — is the third largest city of the United States after New York City and Los Angeles and is the largest inland city of the nation. ...

Screenshot of System 6; Chicago is used in the menus, the title bars and in the dialog.

According to Susan Kare, Chicago was the first font to be developed for the Macintosh. Before the team settled on the familiar "world cities" naming convention for the fonts, it was called Elefont (Elefont is also the name of a bold semi-serif typeface designed by Bob McGrath in 1978). The first bitmap version included only a 12 pt version. This font, with only very minor changes to spacing, was used for menus, dialogs, window titles and text labels in up to and including version 7.6 of the system. The TrueType version looked identical to the original bitmap typeface at lower sizes, but scaled better to greater sizes. One of Chicago's major features was that it could be made 'grey' (to indicate a disabled menu item) by removing every other pixel (since actual grey type was impossible on a black-and-white monitor) and remain legible. Image File history File links Manipulated version of Image:Chicago in System 6 UI.png. ... 1978 was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1978 calendar). ... A point is a unit of measure in typography. ...

German versions of System 7.x had a different rendering of Chicago. The "w" had two dips instead of one at the end of the letter, and the "I" (capital "i") appeared more like a column than a vertical line. A mix of this and the original Chicago is used in the iPod. A grayscale fourth-generation iPod with earphones. ...

In Mac OS 8, Charcoal replaced Chicago as the default system font. Chicago continued to be distributed as a standard component of the system, and Apple even urged developers to keep designing user interfaces for the Chicago typeface, since the new alternate fonts used the Chicago metrics as a foundation. Mac OS 8 is a series of versions of the Mac OS that, although they introduced few remarkable new user features, supported a transition through major changes in the Apple Macintosh hardware platform. ... Charcoal was the default menu font in Mac OS 8 & 9, replacing Chicago. ...

Chicago was also used in Apple marketing materials. It was also common to find this font in early amateur desktop publishing productions, since it was available as part of the system. While Apple gravitated away from Chicago following the adoption of Charcoal as part of the platinum theme in Mac OS, it was later revived in the user interface for the iPod music player, where legibility on a black-and-white screen became once again an asset. Desktop publishing, or DTP, is the process of editing and layout of printed material intended for publication, such as books, magazines, brochures, and the like using a personal computer. ... In Mac OS terminology, Platinum was the Appearance Manager theme that Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9 used. ... A grayscale fourth-generation iPod with earphones. ...

Chicago is a registered trademark ("typeface fonts recorded on computer software"), belonging to Apple since August 1996. The Bass Red Triangle, was the first trademark registered in Britain in 1876. ... 1996 is a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ...

It was heavily used by The Designers Republic, especially on many IDM music covers. Incunabula by Autechre, cover design by TDR Appetite for Disctruction by Funkstörung, cover design by TDR WipEout for the Playstation, logo and interface design by TDR The Designers Republic (TDR or miTDR for short) is a group of graphic designers, founded on July 14, 1986 by Ian Anderson, and... For other uses of the acronym IDM, see IDM (disambiguation). ...

Sample of the Chicago typeface

The following paragraph is in Chicago if it is installed on your machine. If not, a monospace font is used. Note that this sample may include characters which are not present in the font, in which case some user agents may substitute a different font to display these characters. A user agent is the client application used with a particular network protocol; the phrase is most commonly used in reference to those which access the World Wide Web. ...

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum. The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog. 这是一些汉字。 Zhè shì yì xiē Hànzì. Example of IPA transcription: /ɪgˈzɑːmpəl əv aɪpiːˈeɪ tɹɑːnˈskɹɪpʃən/. Greek: Ελληνικά. Cyrillic: Кириллица. Thai: ฟหกดึ้. Khmer: កខ. Arabic: العربية. Scandinavian characters: ÅÄÆÖØ åäæöø.
Numbers: 1234567890 Lorem ipsum (lipsum for short) is the standard placeholder text used since the 1500s in the publishing and graphic design industry. ... The phrase The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog or A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog was frequently used to test typewriters, because it is a coherent short sentence that uses all the letters in the English language alphabet. ... 漢字 in Traditional Chinese and other languages. ... The International Phonetic Alphabet. ... The Cyrillic alphabet (or azbuka, from the old name of the first letters) is an alphabet used to write six natural Slavic languages (Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian) and many other languages of the former Soviet Union, Asia and Eastern Europe. ... The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog translated into Khmer. ... The Arabic alphabet is the script used for writing the Arabic language. ... The North Germanic languages (also Scandinavian languages or Nordic languages) is a branch of the Germanic languages spoken in Scandinavia, parts of Finland and on the Faroe Islands and Iceland. ...

See also

• Apple typography

Apple Computer has been attentive to the typefaces used in its marketing, operating systems and industrial design. ...

References

• USPTO record for CHICAGO trademark
• Susan Kare. World Class Cities. Retrieved September 21, 2004.
• MyFonts. Chicago font family. Retrieved September 21, 2004.
• Apple Computer, Inc. Human Interface Guidelines for Mac OS 8. Retrieved September 21, 2004