Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called " serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than s ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...

developed in 1957 by Swiss

typeface designer Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below. A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...

Max Miedinger Max Miedinger (24 December 1910 – 8 March 1980) was a Swiss typeface designer, best known for creating the ''Neue Haas Grotesk'' typeface in 1957, renamed Helvetica in 1960. Marketed as a symbol of cutting-edge Swiss technology, Helvetica achie ...

and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a

neo-grotesque In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...

design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) typeface

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, t ...

and other German and Swiss designs. Its use became a hallmark of the

International Typographic Style The International Typographic Style, also known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style that emerged in Russia, the Netherlands, and Germany in the 1920s and was further developed by designers in Switzerland during the 1950s. The Internati ...

that emerged from the work of Swiss designers in the 1950s and '60s, becoming one of the most popular typefaces of the mid-20th century. Over the years, a wide range of variants have been released in different weights, widths, and sizes, as well as matching designs for a range of non-Latin alphabets. Notable features of Helvetica as originally designed include a high

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 le ...

, the termination of strokes on horizontal or vertical lines and an unusually tight spacing between letters, which combine to give it a dense, solid appearance. Developed by the ''Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei'' (

Haas Type Foundry Haas Type Foundry (''Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei'') was a Swiss manufacturer of foundry type. First the factory was located in Basel, in the 1920s they relocated to Münchenstein. History Haas traces its origins back to the printer Jean Exerti ...

) of

Münchenstein Münchenstein (Swiss German: ''Minggestai'') is a municipality in the district of Arlesheim in the canton of Basel-Landschaft in Switzerland. Historical records Münchenstein is first mentioned in 1196 as ''Kekingen''. In 1270, it was mentio ...

(

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (B ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

, its release was planned to match a trend: a resurgence of interest in turn-of-the-century "grotesque" sans-serifs among European graphic designers, that also saw the release of Univers by

Adrian Frutiger Adrian Johann Frutiger ( ; 24 May 1928 – 10 September 2015) was a Swiss typeface designer who influenced the direction of type design in the second half of the 20th century. His career spanned the hot metal, phototypesetting and digital ...

the same year. Hoffmann was the president of the Haas Type Foundry, while Miedinger was a freelance graphic designer who had formerly worked as a Haas salesman and designer. Miedinger and Hoffmann set out to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, had no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage. Originally named Neue Haas Grotesk (New Haas Grotesque), it was rapidly licensed by Linotype and renamed Helvetica in 1960, which in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

means "Swiss" (from '' Helvetia''), capitalising on Switzerland's reputation as a centre of ultra-modern graphic design. A feature-length film directed by Gary Hustwit was released in 2007 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the typeface's introduction in 1957.

History

The first version of the typeface (which later became known as Helvetica) was created in by Swiss type designer Max Miedinger. His goal is to design a new sans serif font that can compete in the Swiss market, as a neutral font that should not be given any additional meaning. The main influence on Helvetica was Akzidenz-Grotesk from Berthold; Hoffman's scrapbook of proofs of the design shows careful comparison of test proofs with snippets of Akzidenz-Grotesk. Its 'R' with a curved tail resembles Schelter-Grotesk, another turn-of-the-century sans-serif sold by Haas. Wolfgang Homola comments that in Helvetica "the weight of the stems of the capitals and the lower case is better balanced" than in its influences. Attracting considerable attention on its release as ''Neue Haas Grotesk'' (''Nouvelle Antique Haas'' in French-speaking countries), Stempel and Linotype adopted Neue Haas Grotesk for release in hot metal composition, the standard typesetting method at the time for body text, and on the international market. In , its name was changed by Haas' German parent company Stempel to ''Helvetica'' in order to make it more marketable internationally; it comes from the Latin name for the pre-Roman tribes of what became Switzerland. Intending to match the success of Univers, Arthur Ritzel of Stempel redesigned Neue Haas Grotesk into a larger family. The design was popular: Paul Shaw suggests that Helvetica "began to muscle out" Akzidenz-Grotesk 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 ...

from around summer 1965, when Amsterdam Continental, which imported European typefaces, stopped pushing Akzidenz-Grotesk in its marketing and began to focus on Helvetica instead. It was also made available for

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). T ...

systems, as well as in other formats such as Letraset dry transfers and plastic letters, and many phototypesetting imitations and knock-offs were rapidly created by competing phototypesetting companies. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Linotype licensed Helvetica to

Xerox Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (having moved from St ...

Adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for '' mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of ...

and

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancest ...

, guaranteeing its importance in digital printing by making it one of the core fonts of the

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Do ...

page description language. This led to a version being included on Macintosh computers and a metrically-compatible clone,

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 ...

, on Windows computers. The rights to Helvetica are now held by Monotype Imaging, which acquired Linotype; the Neue Haas Grotesk digitisation (discussed below) was co-released with Font Bureau.

Characteristics

* Tall

, which makes it easier to read at distance. * Tight spacing between letters. * An oblique rather than italic style, a common feature of almost all grotesque and neo-grotesque typefaces. * Wide capitals of uniform width, particularly obvious in the wide 'E' and 'F'. * Square-looking 's'. * Bracketed top flag of '1'. * Rounded off square tail of 'R'. * Concave curved stem of '7'. * Two-storied 'a' (with curves of bowl and stem), a standard neo-grotesque feature, and single-storey 'g' Like many neo-grotesque designs, Helvetica has narrow apertures, which limits its legibility onscreen and at small print sizes. It also has no visible difference between upper-case 'i' and lower-case 'L', although the number 1 is quite identifiable with its flag at top left. Its tight, display-oriented spacing may also pose problems for legibility. Other fonts intended for legibility at small sizes such as Verdana,

Meta Meta (from the Greek μετά, '' meta'', meaning "after" or "beyond") is a prefix meaning "more comprehensive" or "transcending". In modern nomenclature, ''meta''- can also serve as a prefix meaning self-referential, as a field of study or end ...

, Trebuchet, or a monospace font such as

Courier A courier is a person or organisation that delivers a message, package or letter from one place or person to another place or person. Typically, a courier provides their courier service on a commercial contract basis; however, some couriers are ...

, which makes all letters quite wide, may be more appropriate than Helvetica.

Usage examples

File:Cassina SpA logo.svg, Logo of Cassina S.p.A. File:ENTRANCE TO THE UNDERGROUND PARKING LOT WHICH WAS BUILT BENEATH THE FAMOUS BEETHOVEN STATUE AND PARK - NARA - 549663 (cropped).tif, Sign in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

, 1973 File:Granville CTA sign.jpg,

Chicago 'L' (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

signage File:Office national du film montreal.jpg,

National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary fi ...

logo File:2016 EU Referendum HM Government Pamphlet.jpeg,

UK government ga, Rialtas a Shoilse gd, Riaghaltas a Mhòrachd , image = HM Government logo.svg , image_size = 220px , image2 = Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg , image_size2 = 180px , caption = Royal Arms , date_est ...

publication File:Hans Michel 1964, Nr.1, Die Teuflischen.jpg, 1964 poster for '' Les Diaboliques'' Helvetica is among the most widely used sans-serif typefaces. Versions exist for

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, Greek, Japanese, Korean,

Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Khmer, and Vietnamese alphabets. Chinese 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'' and often abbreviated as s'') is an American adult-oriented night-time cable television channel that shares channel space with the basic cable network Cartoon Network and is programmed by its in-house ...

, American Apparel,

BASF BASF SE () is a German multinational chemical company and the largest chemical producer in the world. Its headquarters is located in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The BASF Group comprises subsidiaries and joint ventures in more than 80 countries ...

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 2012 ...

, Blaupunkt, 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 ECM may refer to: Economics and commerce * Engineering change management * Equity capital markets * Error correction model, an econometric model * European Common Market Mathematics * Elliptic curve method * European Congress of Mathemat ...

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 Penney OpCo LLC, doing business as JCPenney and often abbreviated JCP, is a midscale American department store chain operating 667 stores across 49 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. Departments inside JCPenney stores include Mens, Womens, Boys, Girl ...

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 Motors ...

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 Per ...

, Kawasaki, Knoll, Kroger, 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 ...

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American 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 public companies, Motorola ...

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.,

Panasonic formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...

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- ...

, Philippine Airlines,

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,

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, debi ...

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 oil brand owned and operated by Chevron Corporation. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owned the Havoline motor oil brand. Texaco was an independent company unt ...

, Tupperware, Viceland, 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 ...

used Helvetica as the system typeface of iOS 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, succeedin ...

used the type on the Space Shuttle orbiter. Helvetica is also used in the United States television rating system. The Canadian government 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 union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...

, 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

, 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

, 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 c ...

, 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 gr ...

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. States and nine cities in Canada. ...

used the typeface on the "pointless arrow" logo, and it was adopted by Danish railway company DSB for a time period. In addition, the former state-owned operator of the British railway system developed its own Helvetica-based Rail Alphabet 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 ...

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. 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 ...

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 h ...

and

Martin Majoor Martin Majoor (born 14 October 1960) is a Dutch type designer and graphic designer. As of 2006, he had worked since 1997 in both Arnhem, Netherlands, and Warsaw, Poland. Biography Early life Majoor was born in 1960 in the town of Baarn, in ...

, 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 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 Kit may refer to: Places *Kitt, Indiana, US, formerly Kit * Kit, Iran, a village in Mazandaran Province * Kit Hill, Cornwall, England People * Kit (given name), a list of people and fictional characters * Kit (surname) Animals * Young animal ...

, 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 Europ ...

tournament. Liebherr Group 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 cr ...

''. 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 released a documentary film, '' Helvetica'' (Plexifilm, DVD), to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the typeface. In the film, graphic designer Wim Crouwel 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 t ...

displayed an exhibit called "50 Years of Helvetica". In 2011 the Disseny Hub Barcelona 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 corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

's April Fools' Day 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 cas ...

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".

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

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)

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 * Imp ...

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 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 ...

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 reno ...

's FF Schulbuch is similar.

Language variants

Helvetica Greek has gone through several versions. Letraset 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 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, 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. 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, a Linotype subsidiary. The studio manager was Wolfgang Schimpf, and his assistant was Reinhard Haus; the manager of the project was René Kerfante.

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 a ...

, 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 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 la ...

prior to OS X Yosemite used Lucida Grande as the system font. The version of Helvetica Neue used as the system font in OS X 10.10 is specially optimised;

'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 for " 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 fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

in iOS 9 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. Followin ...

Neue Helvetica Georgian (2015)

It is a version with Georgian script support. Designed by Akaki Razmadze at Monotype Bad Homburg. Helvetica Georgian

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)

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)

Neue Haas Grotesk Text Pro typeface specimen

'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 type ...

, and Font Bureau with an article on the history of Helvetica by Professor Indra Kupferschmid. Unlike earlier digitisations, Schwartz created two different optical sizes for body text 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,

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 ...

'' newspaper. Writing for ''Typographica'', Matthew Butterick 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, and for the album '' Midnights'',

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. Bo ...

. 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 ...

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 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

Helvetica, Arial, MS Sans, Bitstream Vera comparison

Derivative designs based on Helvetica were rapidly developed, taking advantage of the lack of copyright protection in the

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'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++ URW Type Foundry GmbH (formerly URW++ Design & Development GmbH) is a type foundry based in Hamburg, Germany. The foundry has its own library with more than 500 font families. The company specializes in customized corporate typefaces and the d ...

's Nimbus Sans 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 Mannesma ...

'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 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, JR East station code * URW++ a typeface foundry * Sop language Sob (also Sob, Us ...

(later URW++) under the leadership of Peter Karow produced a modification of Helvetica called Nimbus Sans. 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's

, 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", 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 wit ...

, 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 to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

in 1996, and donated to the Ghostscript 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 scientific document preparation software, and since 2009 general under the GUST font license. FreeSans 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 a ...

under the

SIL Open Font License The SIL Open Font License (or OFL in short) is one of the major open font licenses, which allows embedding, or "bundling", of the font in commercially sold products. OFL is a free and open source license. It was created by SIL Internationa ...

. 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. Much more loosely, Roboto was developed by Christian Robertson of

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.

Derivative designs

Some fonts based on Helvetica are intended for different purposes and have clearly different designs. Digital-period font designer Ray Larabie 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 nationa ...

'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. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...

; 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 exist ...

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 Aldo Novarese (29 June 1920 – 16 September 1995) was an Italian type designer who lived and worked mostly in Turin. Training and career Born in 1920, he entered the G.B. Paravia Typographic School in Turin, where he obtained a diploma. In 193 ...

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'

imitating Helvetica more closely. Forma has been digitised by SoftMaker as "Formula" and (in a much more complete version with optical sizes) as Forma DJR by David Jonathan Ross at Font Bureau 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). 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-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, 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 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 and

. It was developed in the 1970s for electronic on-screen

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 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 hav ...

’ 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 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. 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