Khmer, and
Vietnamese
Vietnamese may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia
** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam.
* Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam
** Overse ...
alphabets.
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
faces have been developed to complement Helvetica.
Helvetica is a common choice for commercial
wordmarks, including those for
3M (including
Scotch Tape),
Adult Swim
Adult Swim (AS; stylized as dult swim
Dult is a village in Batala in Gurdaspur district of Punjab State, India. It is located from sub district headquarter, from district headquarter and from Sri Hargobindpur. The village is administrated by Sarpanch an elected representati ...
and often abbreviated as s is an American adult-oriented night-time cable television Television channel, channel that shares channel space with the basic cable network Cartoon Network and is programme ...
,
American Apparel
American Apparel Inc. is an online-only retailer and former brick-and-mortar stores operator based in Los Angeles, California. Founded by Canadian businessman Dov Charney in 1989, it was a vertically integrated company that ranked as one of the ...
,
BASF
BASF Societas Europaea, SE () is a German multinational corporation, multinational chemical company and the List of largest chemical producers, largest chemical producer in the world. Its headquarters is located in Ludwigshafen, Germany.
The ...
,
Behance
Behance (stylized as Bēhance) is a social media platform owned by Adobe whose main focus is to showcase and discover creative work.
Behance was founded by Matias Corea and Scott Belsky in November 2005. It was acquired by Adobe in December 201 ...
,
Blaupunkt
Blaupunkt GmbH () was a German manufacturer of mostly car audio equipment. It was owned by Robert Bosch GmbH from 1933 until 1 March 2009, when it was sold to Aurelius AG of Germany. It filed for bankruptcy in late 2015 with liquidation proceed ...
,
BMW,
Diaspora
A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...
,
ECM,
Funimation
Crunchyroll, LLC, previously known as Funimation from 1994 to 2022, is an American entertainment company owned by Japanese conglomerate Sony as a joint venture between Sony Pictures and Sony Music Entertainment Japan's Aniplex that specializes ...
,
General Motors
The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...
(until 2021),
J. C. Penney,
Jeep
Jeep is an American automobile marque, now owned by multi-national corporation Stellantis. Jeep has been part of Chrysler since 1987, when Chrysler acquired the Jeep brand, along with remaining assets, from its previous owner American Moto ...
,
Kaiser Permanente
Kaiser Permanente (; KP), commonly known simply as Kaiser, is an American integrated managed care consortium, based in Oakland, California, United States, founded in 1945 by industrialist Henry J. Kaiser and physician Sidney Garfield. Kaiser P ...
,
Kawasaki,
Knoll
In geography, knoll is another term for a knowe or hillock, a small, low, round natural hill or mound.
Knoll may also refer to:
Places
* Knoll Camp, site of an Iron Age hill fort Hampshire, England, United Kingdom
* Knoll Lake, Leonard Canyon, A ...
,
Kroger
The Kroger Company, or simply Kroger, is an American retail company that operates (either directly or through its subsidiaries) supermarkets and multi-department stores throughout the United States.
Founded by Bernard Kroger in 1883 in Cincin ...
,
LG (until 2015),
Lufthansa
Deutsche Lufthansa AG (), commonly shortened to Lufthansa, is the flag carrier of Germany. When combined with its subsidiaries, it is the second- largest airline in Europe in terms of passengers carried. Lufthansa is one of the five founding m ...
,
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...
,
Nestlé
Nestlé S.A. (; ; ) is a Switzerland, Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered in Vevey, Vaud, Switzerland. It is the largest publicly held food company in the world, measured by revenue and other me ...
,
Oath Inc.
Traditionally an oath (from Anglo-Saxon ', also called plight) is either a statement of fact or a promise taken by a sacrality as a sign of verity. A common legal substitute for those who conscientiously object to making sacred oaths is to giv ...
,
Panasonic
formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka, Kadoma, Osaka P ...
,
Parmalat
Parmalat S.p.A. is a dairy and food corporation which is a subsidiary of French multinational company Lactalis. It was founded by Calisto Tanzi in 1961.
Having become the leading global company in the production of long-life milk using ultra-h ...
,
Philippine Airlines
Philippine Airlines (PAL), a trade name of PAL Holdings, Inc. ( PSEPAL (Philippine Air Lines until 1970), is the flag carrier airline of the Philippines. Headquartered at the PNB Financial Center in Pasay, the airline was founded in 1941 and i ...
,
Sears
Sears, Roebuck and Co. ( ), commonly known as Sears, is an American chain of department stores founded in 1892 by Richard Warren Sears and Alvah Curtis Roebuck and reincorporated in 1906 by Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald, with what began a ...
,
Seiko Epson
Seiko Epson Corporation, or simply known as Epson, is a Japanese multinational electronics company and one of the world's largest manufacturers of computer printers and information- and imaging-related equipment. Headquartered in Suwa, Nagano, ...
,
Skype
Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...
,
Target
Target may refer to:
Physical items
* Shooting target, used in marksmanship training and various shooting sports
** Bullseye (target), the goal one for which one aims in many of these sports
** Aiming point, in field artillery, fi ...
,
Texaco
Texaco, Inc. ("The Texas Company") is an American Petroleum, oil brand owned and operated by Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its Gasoline, fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an Indepe ...
,
Tupperware
Tupperware is an American home products line that includes preparation, storage, and serving products for the kitchen and home. In 1942, Earl Tupper developed his first bell-shaped container; the brand products were introduced to the public in 1 ...
,
Viceland
Viceland (stylized in all caps), and Vice TV in the United States, are brands used for television channels owned and programmed by Vice Media. Viceland launched on February 29, 2016, with two branded cable channels; the American version (rebra ...
, and
Verizon
Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...
.
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
used Helvetica as the system typeface of
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
until 2015.
Helvetica has been widely used by the
U.S. government; for example, federal income tax forms are set in Helvetica, and
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research.
NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
used the type on the
Space Shuttle orbiter
The Space Shuttle orbiter is the spaceplane component of the Space Shuttle, a partially reusable orbital spacecraft system that was part of the discontinued Space Shuttle program. Operated from 1977 to 2011 by NASA, the U.S. space agency, thi ...
.
Helvetica is also used in the
United States television rating system. The
Canadian government
The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown-in-C ...
also uses Helvetica as its identifying typeface, with three variants being used in
its corporate identity program, and encourages its use in all federal agencies and websites.
In the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
, Helvetica is legally required to be used for health warnings on tobacco products such as cigarettes.
Helvetica is commonly used in transportation settings. New York City's
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is a public benefit corporation responsible for public transportation in the New York City metropolitan area of the U.S. state of New York. The MTA is the largest public transit authority in th ...
(MTA) adopted Helvetica for use in signage in 1989. From 1970 to 1989, the standard font was Standard Medium, an American release of Akzidenz-Grotesk, as defined by
Unimark's New York City Transit Authority Graphic Standards Manual. The MTA system is still rife with a proliferation of Helvetica-like fonts, including
Arial
Arial (also called Arial MT) is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts in the neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 3.1 on, some other Microsoft software appli ...
, in addition to some old signs in Medium Standard, and a few anomalous signs in Helvetica Narrow.
Helvetica is also used in the
Washington Metro
The Washington Metro (or simply Metro), formally the Metrorail,[Google Books search/preview ...](_blank)
, the
Chicago 'L'
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
, Philadelphia's
SEPTA
The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) is a regional public transportation authority that operates bus, rapid transit, commuter rail, light rail, and electric trolleybus services for nearly 4 million people in five coun ...
, and the
Madrid Metro
The Madrid Metro (Spanish: ''Metro de Madrid'') is a rapid transit system serving the city of Madrid, capital of Spain. The system is the 14th longest rapid transit system in the world, with a total length of 293 km (182 mi). Its gro ...
.
Amtrak
The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...
used the typeface on the "pointless arrow" logo, and it was adopted by Danish railway company
DSB DSB may refer to:
Science, technology and devices
* DsbA, a bacterial member of the Dsb (disulfide bond) family of enzymes
* Double strand break, a break in both DNA strands, part of DNA repair
* in telecommunications, double-sideband transmission ...
for a time period. In addition, the former state-owned operator of the
British railway system
The railway system in Great Britain is the oldest railway system in the world. The first locomotive-hauled public railway opened in 1825, which was followed by an era of rapid expansion. Most of the track is managed by Network Rail, which in ...
developed its own Helvetica-based
Rail Alphabet
Rail Alphabet is a typeface designed by Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert for signage on the British Rail network. First used at Liverpool Street station, it was then adopted by the Design Research Unit (DRU) as part of their comprehensive 19 ...
font, which was also adopted by the
National Health Service
The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...
and the
British Airports Authority
Heathrow Airport Holdings is the United Kingdom-based operator of Heathrow Airport. The company also operated Gatwick Airport, Stansted Airport, Edinburgh Airport and several other UK airports, but was forced by the Competition Commission to se ...
.
The Helvetica 77 variation is used in street and house signage in
Riga
Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...
and other municipalities in
Latvia
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...
, although common road signage in the country uses a version of
DIN 1451
DIN 1451 is a sans-serif typeface that is widely used for traffic, administrative and technical applications.
It was defined by the German standards body DIN (, 'German Institute for Standardisation', pronounced like the English word ''din'') i ...
.
The typeface was displaced from some uses in the 1990s to the increased availability of other fonts on digital
desktop publishing
Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online c ...
systems, and criticism from type designers including
Erik Spiekermann
Erik Spiekermann (born 30 May 1947 in Stadthagen, Lower Saxony) is a German typographer, designer and writer. He is an honorary professor at the University of the Arts Bremen and ArtCenter College of Design.
Biography
Spiekermann studied art hi ...
and
Martin Majoor, both of whom have criticised the design for its omnipresence and overuse.
Majoor has described Helvetica as 'rather cheap' for its failure to move on from the model of Akzidenz-Grotesk.
Road signs in Japan and South Korea formerly used Helvetica.
IBM used Helvetica Neue as its corporate typeface until 2017, spending over $1m annually on licensing fees.
It switched in 2017 to the custom
IBM Plex
IBM Plex is an open source typeface superfamily conceptually designed and developed by Mike Abbink at IBM in collaboration with Bold Monday to reflect the design principles of IBM and to be used for all brand material across the company inte ...
family, concluding that a custom open-source typeface would be more distinctive and practical, as it could be freely distributed and installed without rights issues.
In 2019, the
Switzerland national football team
The Switzerland national football team (german: Schweizer Fussballnationalmannschaft, it, Nazionale di calcio della Svizzera, french: Équipe nationale suisse de football, rm, Squadra naziunala da ballape da la Svizra) represents Switzerland ...
began using Helvetica for its
kit, which it wore for the
UEFA Euro 2020
The 2020 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2020 (stylised as UEFA EURO 2020) or simply Euro 2020, was the 16th UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Europe ...
tournament.
Liebherr Group
Liebherr is a German-Swiss multinational equipment manufacturer based in Bulle, Switzerland, with its main production facilities and origins in Germany.
Liebherr consists of over 130 companies organized into 11 divisions: earthmoving, mining, ...
previously used Helvetica Neue typeface as corporate identity until switched to HVD Fabrikat typeface in 2021.
Media coverage
An early essay on Helvetica's public image as a font used by business and government was written in 1976 by Leslie Savan, a writer on advertising at the ''
Village Voice
''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, the ''Voice'' began as a platform for the creat ...
''.
It was later republished in her book ''The Sponsored Life''.
In 2007, Linotype GmbH held the Helvetica NOW Poster Contest to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the typeface. Winners were announced in the January 2008 issue of the LinoLetter.
In 2007, director
Gary Hustwit
Gary Hustwit is an American independent filmmaker and photographer. He is best known for his design documentaries, which examine the impact of trends in graphic design, typography, industrial design, architecture, and urban planning. He told '' ...
released a documentary film, ''
Helvetica
Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.
Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...
'' (Plexifilm, DVD), to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the typeface. In the film, graphic designer
Wim Crouwel
Willem Hendrik "Wim" Crouwel (; 21 November 1928 – 19 September 2019) was a Dutch graphic designer, type designer, and typographer.
Early life and education
Between 1947 and 1949, he studied Fine Arts at Academie Minerva in Groningen, th ...
said, "Helvetica was a real step from the 19th century typeface... We were impressed by that because it was more neutral, and neutralism was a word that we loved. It should be neutral. It shouldn't have a meaning in itself. The meaning is in the content of the text and not in the typeface." The documentary also presented other designers who associated Helvetica with authority and corporate dominance, and whose rebellion from Helvetica's ubiquity created new styles.
From April 2007 to March 2008, the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
displayed an exhibit called "50 Years of Helvetica". In 2011 the
Disseny Hub Barcelona
The Museu del Disseny de Barcelona (Catalan, English: "Barcelona Design Museum"), is a center for Barcelona's Institute of Culture, which works to promote better understanding and good use of the design world, acting as a museum and laboratory. It ...
displayed an exhibit called ''Helvetica. A New Typeface?''. The exhibition included a timeline of Helvetica over the last fifty years, its antecedents and its subsequent influence, including in the local area.
In 2011, one of
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
's
April Fools' Day
April Fools' Day or All Fools' Day is an annual custom on 1 April consisting of practical jokes and hoaxes. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fools!" at the recipient. Mass media can be involved in these pranks, which may ...
jokes centered on the use of Helvetica. If a user attempted to search for the term "Helvetica" using the search engine, the results would be displayed in the font
Comic Sans
Comic Sans MS is a sans-serif typeface designed by Vincent Connare and released in 1994 by Microsoft Corporation. It is a non-connecting script inspired by comic book lettering, intended for use in cartoon speech bubbles, as well as in other ca ...
.
Variants
A large number of variants of Helvetica were rapidly released to expand on its popularity, including new weights and languages. Linotype confessed by the time of a 1976
advertorial
An advertorial is an advertisement in the form of editorial content. The term "advertorial" is a blend (see portmanteau) of the words "advertisement" and "editorial." Merriam-Webster dates the origin of the word to 1946.
In printed publications, t ...
that things had become somewhat confused: "the series was not planned as a whole from its conception...the series is not as uniform as
Univers
Univers () is a large sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteenth-century German typefaces such a ...
".
Helvetica Light
Helvetica Light was designed by Stempel's artistic director Erich Schultz-Anker, in conjunction with Arthur Ritzel.
Helvetica Inserat
Helvetica Inserat (German for ''advertisement'') is a version designed primarily for use in the advertising industry: this is a narrow variant that is tighter than Helvetica Black Condensed. It gives the glyphs an even larger
x-height
upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography
In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the let ...
and a more squared appearance, similar to
Schmalfette Grotesk. Adobe's release notes date it to 1966 and state that it originated with Stempel.
Helvetica Compressed (1966)
Designed by
Matthew Carter
Matthew Carter (born 1 October 1937) is a British type designer.Christophe_Plantin.html" ;"title="y Christophe Plantin">y Christophe Plantin' in typography's golden age was in perfect condition (some muddle aside) long withPlantin's accoun ...
and Hans-Jürg Hunziker for
cold type
Phototypesetting is a method of setting type. It uses photography to make columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper.
It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing ( digital typesetting).
...
.
It shares some design elements with Helvetica Inserat, but uses a curved tail in Q, downward pointing branch in r, and tilde bottom £. Carter has said that in practice it was designed to be similar to
Schmalfette Grotesk and to compete in this role with British designs
Impact
Impact may refer to:
* Impact (mechanics), a high force or shock (mechanics) over a short time period
* Impact, Texas, a town in Taylor County, Texas, US
Science and technology
* Impact crater, a meteor crater caused by an impact event
* Impac ...
and
Compacta, as this style was popular at the time.
Carter, who also later designed Helvetica Greek, had designed a modernised version of Akzidenz-Grotesk for signage at
Heathrow
Heathrow Airport (), called ''London Airport'' until 1966 and now known as London Heathrow , is a major international airport in London, England. It is the largest of the six international airports in the London airport system (the others bei ...
in 1961, and commented later "if we'd known about
elveticaI'm sure we would have used it, since it's a much better typeface than the one I drew. But the typesetting trade was very conservative then, and new type designs traveled slowly."
The family consists of Helvetica Compressed, Helvetica Extra Compressed and Helvetica Ultra Compressed fonts. It has been digitised, for instance in the Adobe Helvetica release.
Helvetica Rounded (1978)
Helvetica Rounded is a version containing rounded stroke terminators, released for bold weights. Linotype's release notes date it to 1978.
Helvetica Narrow
Helvetica Narrow is a version where its width is between Helvetica Compressed and Helvetica Condensed. The font was developed when printer ROM space was very scarce, so it was created by mathematically squashing Helvetica to 82% of the original width, resulting in distorted letterforms, with vertical strokes narrowed but horizontals unchanged.
Because of the distortion problems, Adobe dropped Helvetica Narrow in its release of Helvetica in
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark ...
format, recommending users choose Helvetica Condensed instead.
Helvetica Textbook
Helvetica Textbook is an alternate design of the typeface, which uses 'schoolbook'
stylistic alternates to increase distinguishability: a seriffed capital 'i' and 'j' to increase distinguishability, a 'q' with a flick upwards and other differences. The 'a', 't' and 'u' are replaced with designs similar to those in geometric sans-serifs such as those found in
Futura and
Akzidenz-Grotesk Schulbuch.
FontShop
FontShop International was an international manufacturer of digital typefaces ( fonts), based in Berlin. It was one of the largest digital type foundries.
The ''FontFont'' library of fonts contains designs by 160 type designers, among them renown ...
's FF Schulbuch is similar.
Language variants
Helvetica Greek has gone through several versions.
Letraset
Letraset was a company known mainly for manufacturing sheets of typefaces and other artwork elements using the dry transfer method. Letraset has been acquired by the Colart group and become part of its subsidiary Winsor & Newton.
Corporate histor ...
designed a semi-official version for their dry transfer lettering system, available by 1970, which sold well but was considered unidiomatic by Linotype.
Linotype published a 1971 version designed by
Matthew Carter
Matthew Carter (born 1 October 1937) is a British type designer.Christophe_Plantin.html" ;"title="y Christophe Plantin">y Christophe Plantin' in typography's golden age was in perfect condition (some muddle aside) long withPlantin's accoun ...
which was available for phototypesetting and so for general purpose printing such as extended text.
Carter felt in 1974 that the Letraset version was "a poor thing" and Linotype's version was "the real one" but that Letraset's was well-enough accepted in Greece that he felt it had "caused resistance to our version".
Linotype published a new version in 2001 designed by John Hudson at Tiro Typeworks.
The Cyrillic version was designed in-house in the 1970s at D Stempel AG, then critiqued and redesigned in 1992 under the advice of
Jovica Veljović
Jovica Veljović (; born 1954) is a Serbian type designer and calligrapher. He is professor for type design at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.
In 1985, Veljović was awarded the Prix Charles Peignot, an infrequently awarded prize for t ...
, although
a pirated version had already been created in 1963 by Russian designers Maxim Zhukov and Yuri Kurbatov.
Neue Helvetica (1983)
Helvetica Neue () is a reworking of the typeface with a more structurally unified set of heights and widths. Other changes include improved legibility, heavier punctuation marks, and increased spacing in the numbers.
Neue Helvetica uses a numerical design classification scheme, like
Univers
Univers () is a large sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteenth-century German typefaces such a ...
. The font family is made up of 51 fonts including nine weights in three widths (8 in normal width, 9 in condensed, and 8 in extended width variants) as well as an outline font based on Helvetica 75 Bold Outline (no Textbook or rounded fonts are available). Linotype distributes Neue Helvetica on CD. Helvetica Neue also comes in variants for Central European and Cyrillic text.
It was developed at
D. Stempel AG
D. Stempel AG was a German type foundry, typographic foundry founded by David Stempel (1869–1927), in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Many important font designers worked for the Stempel foundry, including Hans Bohn, Warren Chappell, F. H. Ehmck ...
, a
Linotype subsidiary. The studio manager was Wolfgang Schimpf, and his assistant was Reinhard Haus; the manager of the project was René Kerfante.
Erik Spiekermann
Erik Spiekermann (born 30 May 1947 in Stadthagen, Lower Saxony) is a German typographer, designer and writer. He is an honorary professor at the University of the Arts Bremen and ArtCenter College of Design.
Biography
Spiekermann studied art hi ...
was the design consultant and designed the literature for the launch in 1983.
Figures were widened and some condensed weights changed from having nearly flat-sided verticals to a more continuous curve throughout the entire height.
Designer
Christian Schwartz
Christian Schwartz (born December 30, 1977 in Concord, New Hampshire, United States) is an American type designer. He has been awarded the German Design Award and the Prix Charles Peignot.
Life
A graduate of the Communication Design program at ...
, who would later release his own digitisation of the original Helvetica designs (see below), expressed disappointment with this and other digital releases of Helvetica: "digital Helvetica has always been one-size-fits-all, which leads to unfortunate compromises...the spacing has ended up much looser than Miedinger's wonderfully tight original at display sizes but much too tight for comfortable reading at text sizes."
iOS
iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...
used first Helvetica then Helvetica Neue as its system font. All releases of
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
prior to
OS X Yosemite
OS X Yosemite ( ; version 10.10) is the eleventh major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers.
OS X Yosemite was announced and released to developers on June 2, 2014, at WWDC 2014 and rel ...
used
Lucida Grande
Lucida Grande is a humanist sans-serif typeface. It is a member of the Lucida family of typefaces designed by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. It is best known for its implementation throughout the macOS user interface from 1999 to 2014, as ...
as the system font. The version of Helvetica Neue used as the system font in
OS X 10.10 is specially optimised;
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
's intention is to provide a consistent experience for people who use both iOS and OS X.
Apple replaced Helvetica Neue with the similarly looking
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
in
iOS 9
iOS 9 is the ninth major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc., being the successor to iOS 8. It was announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 8, 2015, and was released on September 16, ...
and
OS X El Capitan
OS X El Capitan ( ) () is the twelfth major release of macOS (named OS X at the time of El Capitan's release), Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh. It focuses mainly on performance, stability, and security. Following ...
.
Neue Helvetica Georgian (2015)
It is a version with Georgian script support. Designed by Akaki Razmadze at Monotype Bad Homburg.
Only OpenType CFF and TTF font formats were released.
The family includes eight fonts in eight weights and one width, without italics (25, 35, 45, 55, 65, 75, 85, 95).
Helvetica World
Helvetica World supports Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, and Vietnamese scripts.
The family consists of four fonts in two weights and one width, with complementary italics.
The Arabic glyphs were based on a redesigned Yakout font family from Linotype. Latin kerning and spacing were redesigned to have consistent spacing.
John Hudson of
Tiro Typeworks designed the Hebrew glyphs for the font family, as well as the Cyrillic, and Greek letters.
Neue Helvetica W1G (2009)
It is a version with Latin Extended, Greek, Cyrillic scripts support. Only OpenType CFF font format was released.
The family includes the fonts from the older Neue Helvetica counterparts, except Neue Helvetica 75 Bold Outline. Additional OpenType features include subscript/superscript.
Neue Helvetica Arabic (2009)
Designed by Lebanese designer
Nadine Chahine
Nadine Chahine (in Arabic: نادين شاهين) is a Lebanese type designer working as the CEO at I Love Typography Ltd and the Director at ArabicType Ltd. From 2005 till 2015 she worked as the Arabic Specialist at Linotype and Monotype Imagi ...
, it is a version with Arabic script support. Only OpenType TTF font format was released.
The family includes three fonts in three weights and one width, without italics (45, 55, 65).
Neue Helvetica eText (2011)
It is a version of Neue Helvetica optimised for on-screen use, designed by Akira Kobayashi of Monotype Imaging. Changes from Neue Helvetica include more open spacing.
Unlike Helvetica, the capitals are reduced in size so the lower-case
ascenders rise above them, a common feature associated with text typefaces.
The family includes eight fonts in four weights and one width, with complementary italics (45, 46, 55, 56, 65, 66, 75, 76). OpenType features include numerators/denominators, fractions, ligatures, scientific inferiors, subscript/superscript.
(Neue) Helvetica Thai (2012)
Thai font designer
Anuthin Wongsunkakon of Cadson Demak Co. created
Thai versions of Helvetica and Neue Helvetica fonts. The design uses loopless terminals in Thai glyphs, which had also been used by Wongsunkakon's previous design, Manop Mai (New Manop).
Neue Helvetica Armenian (2016)
Designed by Edik Ghabuzyan, it is a version of Neue Helvetica supporting Armenian language.
The family includes 16 fonts in 8 weights (ultra light, thin, light, regular, medium, bold, heavy, black) with complementary italics.
Neue Helvetica World (2017)
Designed by Nadine Chahine, Linotype Design Studio, Monotype Design Studio and Edik Ghabuzyan, it is a version of Neue Helvetica with support of Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Armenian, Georgian and Vietnamese scripts for total 181 languages, and complete support of Unicode block u+0400. Published in November 2017 by Linotype, it was released in Truetype and OpenType CFF formats.
The family includes 6 fonts in 3 weights (45 Light, 55 Roman, 75 Bold), with complimentary italic. Roman fonts include 1,708 glyphs and 1,285 glyphs for italics.
For working with other languages, the publisher also recommended following complementry fonts:
*Devanagari: Saral Devanagari
*Japanese: Tazugane Gothic, Yu Gothic
*Korean: YD Gothic 100, YD Gothic 700
*Simplified Chinese: M Ying Hei PRC, M Hei PRC
*Traditional Chinese: M Ying Hei HK, M Hei HK
Neue Haas Grotesk (2010)
Christian Schwartz
Christian Schwartz (born December 30, 1977 in Concord, New Hampshire, United States) is an American type designer. He has been awarded the German Design Award and the Prix Charles Peignot.
Life
A graduate of the Communication Design program at ...
's digitisation is based on original settings of the metal type and uses the typeface's original name.
It was released by Linotype (later Monotype Imaging),
Commercial Type
Commercial Type is a digital type foundry established in 2007 by type designers Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz. Its work includes typefaces for ''The Guardian'', such as the Guardian Egyptian series, and other retail and commissioned typefac ...
, and Font Bureau with an article on the history of Helvetica by Professor Indra Kupferschmid.
Unlike earlier digitisations, Schwartz created two different
optical size
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mode ...
s for
body text
__NOTOC__
The body text or body copy is the text forming the main content of a book, magazine, web page, or any other printed or digital work. This is as a contrast to both additional components such as headings, images, charts, footnotes etc. on ...
and display sizes, which have different spacing metrics giving tighter spacing at display size and looser spacing to increase legibility in text. The release includes a number of features not present on digitisations branded as Helvetica,
stylistic alternates such as separate punctuation sets for upper- and lower-case text, "modernist" cedilla designs styled to match the comma and reduced-height numbers to blend into extended text. The Text optical size of Neue Haas Grotesk also provides stylistic alternates for a straight-legged upper case "R", while the Display optic size provides stylistic alternates for a straight-legged upper case "R" and a lower case "a" without tail.
It originated from an abandoned redesign plan for ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' newspaper. Writing for ''Typographica'',
Matthew Butterick
Matthew Coffin Butterick (born November 15, 1970) is an American typographer, lawyer, writer, and computer programmer. He received the 2012 Golden Pen Award from the Legal Writing Institute for his book ''Typography for Lawyers'', which started ...
described the release as better than any previous digital release of Helvetica “it’s never looked better”. Users include
Bloomberg Businessweek
''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...
, the
Whitney Museum
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude ...
, and for the album ''
Midnights
''Midnights'' is the tenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, released on October 21, 2022, via Republic Records. Announced at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, the album marks Swift's first body of new work since her 2020 ...
'',
Taylor Swift
Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Her discography spans multiple genres, and her vivid songwriting—often inspired by her personal life—has received critical praise and wide media coverage. Bor ...
.
Schwartz's company Commercial Type have additionally developed a companion monospaced version, agate version for small sizes and stencil font. The release does not include condensed weights or support for Greek and Cyrillic.
Availability
Users of
Windows 10
Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...
can download three weights of the Text optical size (Regular, Medium, and Bold), including italics, by enabling the "Pan-European Supplemental Fonts" optional feature.
Users of Windows 11 can obtain Neue Haas Grotesk in the same way.
Helvetica Now (2019)
In April 2019,
Monotype
Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...
announced an update of Neue Helvetica called "Helvetica Now", designed by Jan Hendrik Weber and Charles Nix of Monotype Imaging.
The family has one width in three optical sizes, Text, Micro and Display in 8, 6, and 10 weights respectively.
The condensed version corresponding to these optical sizes and weights was published later. Features include circled figures and redesigned arrow and @ glyphs. It also includes a number of alternate characters including curled lower-case L, spurless rounded G, a straight-legged R (found in Neue Haas Grotesk), single-story a (found in Helvetica Textbook) and lowercase u without a spur.
Helvetica clones
Derivative designs based on Helvetica were rapidly developed, taking advantage of the lack of copyright protection in the
phototypesetting
Phototypesetting is a method of setting type. It uses photography to make columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper.
It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing (digital typesetting).
Th ...
font market of the 1960s onward.
Some of these were straight clones, simply intended to be direct substitutes.
Many of these are almost indistinguishable from Helvetica, while some add subtle differences.
Substitute Helvetica designs that have survived into or originated during the digital period have included
Monotype
Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...
's Arial, Compugraphic's CG Triumvirate, ParaType's Pragmatica,
Bitstream
A bitstream (or bit stream), also known as binary sequence, is a sequence of bits.
A bytestream is a sequence of bytes. Typically, each byte is an 8-bit quantity, and so the term octet stream is sometimes used interchangeably. An octet may ...
's Swiss 721,
URW++'s
Nimbus Sans
Nimbus Sans is a sans-serif typeface created by URW++, based on Helvetica.
Nimbus Sans
It is a version using URW++ font source. The family supports Western Europe, East Europe, Turkish, Baltic, and Romanian languages.
The font names ending with ( ...
and
Scangraphic
Scangraphic is a division of Dr. Böger Duplomat Apparate GmbH & Co.KG, based in Wedel near Hamburg, Germany. It was founded by Bernd Holthusen and Knut Schmiedl.
Mannesmann AG acquired Scangraphic in 1989, and the company was renamed Mannesmann ...
's Europa Grotesk.
Berthold itself responded to Helvetica's popularity with Akzidenz-Grotesk Buch, effectively a Helvetica clone.
Besides Helvetica imitations, Helvetica was available in custom derivatives with unusual special-order characters for many years, notably a straight-legged 'R' and round-topped 'A'.
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
uses a custom derivative, "CNN Sans", which has a '1' with a base and larger x-height.
Nimbus Sans
URW URW may refer to:
*Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield
*Union of Russian Workers
*UnReal World, survival video game
*Unrestricted Warfare, military strategy
*Urawa Station
is a junction passenger railway station located in Urawa-ku, Saitama, Japan, operat ...
(later URW++) under the leadership of
Peter Karow produced a modification of Helvetica called
Nimbus Sans
Nimbus Sans is a sans-serif typeface created by URW++, based on Helvetica.
Nimbus Sans
It is a version using URW++ font source. The family supports Western Europe, East Europe, Turkish, Baltic, and Romanian languages.
The font names ending with ( ...
.
This is an extremely large font family with optical sizes spaced for different sizes of text and other variants such as stencil styles.
Florian Hardwig has described its display-oriented styles, with tight spacing, as more reminiscent of Helvetica as used in the 1970s from cold type than any official Helvetica digitisation.
Arial and MS Sans Serif
Monotype
Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...
's
Arial
Arial (also called Arial MT) is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts in the neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 3.1 on, some other Microsoft software appli ...
, created for IBM and also used by Microsoft, is indistinguishable by most non-specialists.
Matthew Carter, who was a consultant for IBM during its design process, describes it as "a Helvetica clone, based ostensibly on their
Grots 215 and 216" (Monotype's old 1920s sans-serif family, popular in British trade printing in the metal type period, and itself based on the Bauer
Venus-Grotesk family).
Differences include:
* Helvetica's strokes are typically cut either horizontally or vertically. This is especially visible in the t, r, f, and C. Arial employs slanted stroke cuts, following Monotype Grotesque.
* Helvetica's G has a spur at bottom right; Arial does not, but instead has a vertical stroke connecting the curved portion to the crossbar.
* The tail of Helvetica's R is more upright whereas Arial's R is more diagonal.
* The number 1 of Helvetica has a square angle underneath the upper spur, Arial has a curve.
* The Q glyph in Helvetica has a straight cross mark, while the cross mark in Arial has a slight curve.
The design was created to substitute for Helvetica: Arial (and many other clones of the period) are metrically identical to the PostScript version of Helvetica, so that a document designed in Helvetica could be displayed and printed correctly without IBM having to pay Linotype for a Helvetica license on its printers.
Microsoft's "Helv" design, later known as "
MS Sans Serif
Microsoft Sans Serif is a TrueType font introduced with early Windows versions. It is the successor of MS Sans Serif (formerly Helv), a proportional bitmap font introduced in Windows 1.0. Both fonts are very similar in design to Arial and Helvet ...
", is a sans-serif typeface that shares many key characteristics to Helvetica, including the horizontally and vertically aligned stroke terminators and more-uniform stroke widths within a glyph.
Free Helvetica substitute fonts
Nimbus Sans L
Nimbus Sans is a sans-serif typeface created by URW++, based on Helvetica.
Nimbus Sans
It is a version using URW++ font source. The family supports Western Europe, East Europe, Turkish, Baltic, and Romanian languages.
The font names ending with ...
, a version of URW's Nimbus Sans spaced to match the standard Linotype/PostScript version of Helvetica, was released under the
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...
in 1996, and donated to the
Ghostscript
Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization or rendering of such page description language files, ...
project to create a free PostScript alternative. It (or a derivative) is used by much open-source software such as
R as a system font.
A derivative of this family known as "TeX Gyre Heros" has been prepared for use in the
TeX
Tex may refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname
* Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer Joseph Arrington Jr.
Entertainment
* ''Tex'', the Italian ...
scientific document preparation software, and since 2009 general under the GUST font license.
FreeSans
GNU FreeFont (also known as Free UCS Outline Fonts) is a family of free OpenType, TrueType and WOFF vector fonts, implementing as much of the Universal Character Set (UCS) as possible, aside from the very large CJK Asian character set. The pr ...
is a free font descending from URW++ Nimbus Sans L, which in turn descends from Helvetica. It is one of free (GPL) fonts developed in GNU FreeFont project, first published in 2002.
Liberation Sans
Liberation or liberate may refer to:
Film and television
* ''Liberation'' (film series), a 1970–1971 series about the Great Patriotic War
* "Liberation" (''The Flash''), a TV episode
* "Liberation" (''K-9''), an episode
Gaming
* '' Liberati ...
is a metrically equivalent font to Arial developed by
Steve Matteson at
Ascender and published by
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide.
Red Hat has become ass ...
under the
SIL Open Font License. It is used in some Linux distributions as default font replacement for Arial.
Oracle
An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination.
Description
The word '' ...
funded the additional development of Liberation Sans Narrow in 2010.
Google commissioned a variation named
Arimo for
ChromeOS
ChromeOS, sometimes stylized as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google. It is derived from the open-source ChromiumOS and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user interfac ...
.
Much more loosely,
Roboto
Roboto () is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface family developed by Google as the system font for its mobile operating system Android, and released in 2011 for Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich".
The entire font family has been licensed un ...
was developed by Christian Robertson of
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
as the system font for its
Android operating system; this has a more condensed design with the influence of straight-sided geometric designs like
DIN 1451
DIN 1451 is a sans-serif typeface that is widely used for traffic, administrative and technical applications.
It was defined by the German standards body DIN (, 'German Institute for Standardisation', pronounced like the English word ''din'') i ...
.
Derivative designs
Some fonts based on Helvetica are intended for different purposes and have clearly different designs. Digital-period font designer
Ray Larabie
Raymond Larabie (born 1970) is a Canadian designer of TrueType and OpenType computer fonts. He owns Typodermic Fonts, which distributes both commercially licensed and shareware/freeware fonts.
Biography and career
Larabie was born in Ottawa, ...
has commented that in the 1970s "everyone was modifying Helvetica with funky curls, mixed-case and effects".
Indeed, in one 1973 competition to design new fonts, three of the 20 winners were decorative designs inspired by Helvetica.
Zhukov and Kurbatov version
In 1963, two students at the Moscow Print Institute designed their own version of Helvetica, one of whom, Maxim Zhukov, would become one of the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
's most prominent typographers. Zhukov and his partner Yuri Kurbatov used upright cursive forms for several of the lowercase letters, which allowed for several of the Helvetica forms to be transferred more directly into Cyrillic.
Their version received widespread use in phototypesetting, especially among other students at the Moscow Print Institute, despite never being commercially released. Zhukov and Kurbatov attempted to publish the typeface in 1964 but were rejected due to the font’s being too closely associated with
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...
; this was one of the major factors as to why an official Cyrillic Helvetica, ''Pragmatica'', would not be released in the
Soviet bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
until
perestroika
''Perestroika'' (; russian: links=no, перестройка, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg) was a political movement for reform within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s widely associated wit ...
in 1989.
Forma (1968)
Created by
Aldo Novarese at the Italian type foundry
Nebiolo, Forma was a geometric-influenced derivative of Helvetica with a
'single-storey' 'a' and extremely tight spacing in the style of the period.
It was offered with 'request'
stylistic alternates imitating Helvetica more closely.
Forma has been digitised by
SoftMaker
SoftMaker Software GmbH is a German software company based in Nuremberg that produces office productivity software and digital fonts. SoftMaker was founded in 1989 by Martin Kotulla. Best known in Germany and the EU, SoftMaker is offering its s ...
as "Formula" and (in a much more complete version with
optical size
In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "sort") for each glyph. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In mode ...
s) as Forma DJR by David Jonathan Ross at
Font Bureau
The Font Bureau, Inc. or Font Bureau is a digital type foundry based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The foundry is one of the leading designers of typefaces, specializing in type designs for magazine and newspaper publishers.
History
...
for ''
Tatler
''Tatler'' is a British magazine published by Condé Nast Publications focusing on fashion and lifestyle, as well as coverage of high society and politics. It is targeted towards the British upper-middle class and upper class, and those interes ...
'' magazine.
Manoptica
Manoptica (1973) was an early effort to adapt Helvetica to the
Thai script
The Thai script ( th, อักษรไทย, ) is the abugida used to write Thai, Southern Thai and many other languages spoken in Thailand. The Thai alphabet itself (as used to write Thai) has 44 consonant symbols ( th, พยัญชน ...
. It is named after and designed by Manop Srisomporn, who designed several typefaces for Thai using the same innovations he used for Manoptica (such as an adaptation of
Eurostile
Eurostile is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Aldo Novarese in 1962. Novarese created Eurostile for one of the best-known Italian foundries, Nebiolo, in Turin.
Novarese developed Eurostile to succeed the similar Microgramma, which ...
). It was highly influential in
Thai typography in that it popularized the removal of the small loops and other flourishes that had theretofore been distinguishing marks on Thai characters and adopted letter forms that bore strong resemblance to Latin letters. It became a widely popular style in advertising and influenced other simplified typefaces for Thai in the following decades.
[ Originally exhibited 18–31 October 2002 at the Jamjuree Art Gallery, Chulalongkorn University, and published in ''Sarakadee''. 17 (211). September 2002.] The adoption of loopless typefaces remains a source of controversy in Thai typography.
Helvetica Flair and others
Designed by Phil Martin at Alphabet Innovations, Helvetica Flair is an unauthorised phototype-period redesign of Helvetica adding
swashes and
unicase
A unicase or unicameral alphabet has just one case for its letters. Arabic, Brahmic scripts like Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Old Hungarian (Hungarian Runic), Hebrew, Iberian, Georgian, and Hangul are unicase writing systems, while (mod ...
-inspired capitals with a lower-case design. Considered a hallmark of 1970s design, it has never been issued digitally. It is considered to be a highly conflicted design, as Helvetica is seen as a spare and rational typeface and swashes are ostentatious: font designer Mark Simonson described it as "almost sacrilegious". Martin would later claim to have been accused of "typographic incest" by one German writer for creating it.
Helvetica Flair was one of several derivative fonts created by Martin in the 1970s (and a particularly legally questionable one, since it was directly named 'Helvetica'). Martin also drew 'Heldustry', a fusion of Helvetica with
Eurostile
Eurostile is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Aldo Novarese in 1962. Novarese created Eurostile for one of the best-known Italian foundries, Nebiolo, in Turin.
Novarese developed Eurostile to succeed the similar Microgramma, which ...
,
and 'Helserif', a redesign of Helvetica with
serif
In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...
s,
and these have both been digitised.
Shatter LET (1973)
Designed by Vic Carless, Shatter assembles together slices of Helvetica to make a typeface that seems to be in motion, or broken and in pieces. It was published by
Letraset
Letraset was a company known mainly for manufacturing sheets of typefaces and other artwork elements using the dry transfer method. Letraset has been acquired by the Colart group and become part of its subsidiary Winsor & Newton.
Corporate histor ...
after jointly winning their 1973 competition to design new fonts.
Writing in 2014, Tim Spencer praised the design for its ominous effect, writing that it offered "glitch-like mechanical aggression
ndcold, machine-induced paranoia. It attacked the Establishment’s preferred information typography style with a sharp edge and recomposed it in a jarring manner that still makes your eyes skitter and your brain tick trying to recompose it. Shatter literally sliced up Swiss modernist authority."
Unica
Unica by ''Team ’77'' (André Gürtler, Christian Mengelt and Erich Gschwind) is as a hybrid of Helvetica,
Univers
Univers () is a large sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteenth-century German typefaces such a ...
and
Akzidenz-Grotesk
Akzidenz-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family originally released by the Berthold Type Foundry of Berlin. ''german: label=none, italic=no, "Akzidenz"'' indicates its intended use as a typeface for commercial print runs such as publicity, tick ...
. It was developed in the 1970s for electronic on-screen
phototypesetting
Phototypesetting is a method of setting type. It uses photography to make columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper.
It has been made obsolete by the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing (digital typesetting).
Th ...
and released in 1980. As phototypesetting was soon replaced by desktop publishing and because of a legal dispute, the typeface rapidly disappeared from the market. In mid 2010s, two digital versions were released: the Swiss foundry
Lineto
Lineto is a Swiss type foundry founded by Cornel Windlin and Stephan Müller in 1993. In 1998, Lineto launched a website to distribute their fonts digitally. In 2007, Jürg Lehni joined the venture.
The most well known fonts on Lineto's catalogue ...
released LL Unica77 with input from Christian Mengelt,
while Linotype released Neue Haas Unica.
Chalet
House Industries
House Industries is a type foundry and design studio based in Yorklyn, Delaware. The company was created in the 1990s in Wilmington, Delaware by co-founders Andy Cruz and Rich Roat. The company is best known for its typeface creations, which have a ...
’ Chalet family is a series of fonts based on Helvetica, inspired by its many derivatives and adaptations in post-war design, and organised by "date" to '1960' (conventional), '1970' and '1980' (both more radically altered and "science fiction" in feel).
House Industries, who are known for outlandish font marketing methods, promoted Chalet through presenting it as inspired by the branding and career progression of a fictitious Swiss ''haute couture'' designer, "René Chalet" (''Chalet'' being French for a small wooden house, so a play on the design company’s name).
Coolvetica
In the digital period, Canadian type designer
Ray Larabie
Raymond Larabie (born 1970) is a Canadian designer of TrueType and OpenType computer fonts. He owns Typodermic Fonts, which distributes both commercially licensed and shareware/freeware fonts.
Biography and career
Larabie was born in Ottawa, ...
has released several digital fonts based upon Helvetica. The most widely known and distributed of these is Coolvetica, which Larabie introduced in 1999; Larabie stated he was inspired by Helvetica Flair, Chalet, and similar variants in creating some of Coolvetica's distinguishing glyphs (most strikingly a swash on capital 'G', lowercase 'y' based on the letterforms of 'g' and 'u,' and a fully curled lowercase 't'), and chose to set a tight default spacing optimised for use in
display type
A display typeface is a typeface that is intended for use at large sizes for headings, rather than for extended passages of body text.
Display typefaces will often have more eccentric and variable designs than the simple, relatively restrained ...
. Larabie's company Typodermic offers Coolvetica in a wide variety of weights as a commercial release, with the semi-bold as freeware taster. As of 2017, the semi-bold remains Larabie's most popular font.
Larabie has also taken inspiration from Helvetica in some of his other designs, including Movatif and GGX88.
Notes
References
External links
Helvetica documentary site* Alternatives to Helvetica: two overlapping articles by Stephen Coles a
fontfeed.com(archived) an
fontshop.com
1962 Stempel advertisement for Breite halbfette Helvetica and Helvetica Kursiv(German)
* Fonts in Use
HelveticaHelvetica Neue
{{Authority control
Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1957
Neo-grotesque sans-serif typefaces
Linotype typefaces
Government typefaces
Traffic signs
Typefaces with optical sizes
Display typefaces
Swiss design