Helvetica Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface
developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann.
History Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger
with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) of Münchenstein, Switzerland.
Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with the successful Akzidenz-Grotesk
in the Swiss market. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, its design was based on Schelter-Grotesk
and Haas' Normal Grotesk. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that
had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety
of signage. When Linotype adopted Neue Haas Grotesk (which
was never planned to be a full range of mechanical and hot-metal typefaces) its design was reworked.
After the success of Univers, Arthur Ritzel of Stempel redesigned Neue Haas Grotesk into
a larger family. In 1960, the typeface's name was changed by
Haas' German parent company Stempel to Helvetica (meaning Swiss in Latin) in order to make
it more marketable internationally. Characteristics
tall x-height, which makes it easier to read in smaller sizes.
two-storied a (with curves of bowl and of stem).
narrow t and f. square-looking s.
bracketed top serif of 1. rounded off square tail of R.
concave curved stem of 7 Variants
Language variants 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 Veljovic. Matthew Carter designed the Helvetica Greek.
Lebanese designer Nadine Chahine designed Neue Helvetica Arabic.
(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). Initial release included 6 fonts in OpenType
Com format for each family in 3 weights (light, regular, bold) and 1 width, with complementary
italics. OpenType features include fractions, glyph composition/decomposition.
Helvetica Light Helvetica Light was designed by Stempel's
artistic director Erich Schultz-Anker, in conjunction with Arthur Ritzel.
Helvetica Compressed Designed by Matthew Carter, this is a narrow
variant that is tighter than Helvetica Condensed. It shares some design elements with Helvetica
Inserat, but uses a curved tail in Q, downward pointing branch in r, and tilde bottom £.
The family consists of Helvetica Compressed, Helvetica Extra Compressed, Helvetica Ultra
Compressed fonts. Helvetica Textbook
Helvetica Textbook is an alternate design of the typeface. Some characters such as 1,
4, 6, 9, I, J, a, f, j, q, t, u, μ, and ¶ are drawn differently from the original version.
Helvetica Inserat (1957) Helvetica Inserat is a version designed in
1957 primarily for use in the advertising industry. With metric similar to Helvetica
Black Condensed, the design gives the glyphs a more squared appearance, similar to Impact
and Haettenschweiler. Strike with strokes in $, ¢ are replaced by non-strikethrough
version. 4 is opened at top. Helvetica Rounded (1978)
Helvetica Rounded is a version containing rounded stroke terminators. Only bold, bold
oblique, black, black oblique, bold condensed, bold outline fonts were made, with outline
font not issued in digital form by Linotype. Helvetica Narrow
Helvetica Narrow is a version where its width is between Helvetica Compressed and Helvetica
Condensed. However, the width is scaled in a way that is optically consistent with the
widest width fonts. 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 and thin vertical strokes next to thicker
horizontals. OpenType version was not produced by Adobe
under the distortion reasoning, and recommended Helvetica Condensed instead. However, in Linotype's
OpenType version of Helvetica Narrow, the distortions found in the Adobe fonts are non-existent.
Neue Helvetica (1983) Neue Helvetica 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 9 weights in 3 widths (8, 9, 8 in normal, condensed, extended widths
respectively), and an outline font based on Helvetica 75 Bold Outline (no Textbook or
rounded fonts are available). Linotype distributes Neue Helvetica on CD. Neue Helvetica 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.
Erik Spiekermann was the design consultant and designed the literature for the launch
in 1983. 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. Helvetica World
Also called Helvetica Linotype, Helvetica World supports Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew,
and Vietnamese scripts. The family consists of four fonts in 2 weights
and 1 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 Haas Grotesk (2010)
Neue Haas Grotesk is the most recent digitisation of Helvetica's precursor, completed by type
designer Christian Schwartz in 2004. This project, which he referred to as a restoration,
was completed in 2010. The updated design includes a version optimized for on-screen
display, as well as a style for printed text, both of which preserve the original essence
of the typeface. Improved features include corrected obliques, tabular figures, stylistic
updates, and an extended character set. Neue Helvetica eText (2011)
It is a version of Neue Helvetica optimised for on-screen use, designed by Akira Kobayashi
of Monotype Imaging. The family includes 8 fonts in 4 weights and
1 width, with complimentary italics (45, 46, 55, 56, 65, 66, 75, 76). OpenType features
include numerators/denominators, fractions, ligatures, scientific inferiors, subscript/superscript.
Similar typefaces Generic versions of Helvetica have been made
by various vendors, including Monotype Imaging (CG Triumvirate), ParaType (Pragmatica), Bitstream
(Swiss 721), URW++ (Nimbus Sans), and Ray Larabie (Coolvetica).
Monotype's Arial, designed in 1982, while different from Helvetica in some few details,
has identical character widths, and is indistinguishable by most non-specialists. The characters C,
G, R, Q, 1, a, e, r, and t are useful for quickly distinguishing Arial and Helvetica.
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. Helvetica's G has a well-defined spur; Arial
does not. 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 snake-like curve.
"Helv", 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 uniformed stroke widths within a glyph.
Usage Helvetica is among the most widely used sans-serif
typefaces. Versions exist for many alphabets and scripts.
Helvetica is a popular choice for commercial wordmarks.
Media coverage In 2007, Linotype GmbH held the Helvetica
NOW Poster Contest to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the typeface. Winners were announced in
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 in New York City displayed an
exhibit called "50 Years of Helvetica", which celebrated the many uses of the typeface.
In 2011 the Disseny Hub Barcelona displayed an exhibit called Helvetica. A New Typeface?.
The exhibition included a timeline of Helvetica’s consolidation over the last fifty years with
a view to understanding its role in the history of design, as well as its antecedents and
its subsequent influence. The itinerary started out with a selection of local works, highlighting
the top-quality design of current and past creations whose common denominator is their
use of Helvetica. In 2011, one of Google's April Fool's Day
jokes centered around 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.
Notes ^ a b Helvetica (Documentary). 2007-09-12.
^ "myfonts: Arthur Ritzel". New.myfonts.com. 1999-02-22. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
^ "Helvetica Cyrillic". Fonts. Adobe. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
^ "TYPO.18" (magazine). CZ: Svettisku. December 2005.
^ "Download Neue Helvetica® Arabic font family". Linotype.com. Retrieved 2013-09-21.
^ "Helvetica now available in Thai" (World Wide Web log). Linotype. Mar 2003.
^ "Helvetica jetzt auch in Thai – Eine der beliebtesten Schriften ab sofort in neuer
Sprachversion bei Linotype erhältlich" (in German). 2012-03-20.
^ "Note on Helvetica Thai". Anuthin. 2012-03-02. ^ "Helvetica Thai". Linotype.
^ "Manop Mai" (distribution). Anuthin + Cadson Demak. Dec 2009.
^ de Jong, Cees W; Purvis, Alston W; Friedl, Friedrich. "Creative Type: A Sourcebook of
Classic and Contemporary Letterforms". Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-50051229-6. Retrieved
2009-06-08. ^ "Type 1 ("PostScript") to OpenType font
conversion". Adobe. Retrieved 2009-06-08. ^ "Linotype Library presents entire New Helvetica
family on a single CD". Linotype.com. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
^ "Who Made Helvetica Neue?", typophile.com ^ "The Language Whiz — Helvetica Linotype".
Linotype.com. 2007-10-16. Retrieved 2009-06-08. ^ "Linotype Releases 1100+ OpenType Fonts:
Release a Significant Step Towards Format's Acceptance". Typographica.org. August 6, 2003.
Archived from the original on 2008-07-04. Retrieved 2009-06-08. "In the Comments Section:
The biggest differences are the new Greek, Cyrillic and Hebrew designs, and the presence
of Arabic support based on the radically redesigned Yakout Linotype (not a perfect match for the
Helvetica, but the most appropriate in the Linotype Library; this is 'core font' Arabic
support: not for fine typography). There is also a large maths and symbol set in each
font (not complete maths typesetting support, but more than you'll get in most fonts). The
only big change in the Latin is that the whole thing has been respaced. The old Helvetica
Std Type 1 and TT fonts inherited, via phototype, the unit metrics of the original hot metal
type. This led to all sorts of oddities in the sidebearings, which were cleaned up during
development of Helvetica Linotype. It is still quite a tightly spaced typeface by today's
standards, but the spacing is now consistent. It was also re-kerned. Helvetica Linotype
has also been extensively hinted for screen. -- John Hudson"
^ "Experimental Arabic Type". Typographica.org. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
^ Macmillan, Neil. An A–Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press: 2006. ISBN 0-300-11151-7.
^ "Neue Haas Grotesk". The Font Bureau, Inc. p. Introduction.
^ "Neue Haas Grotesk - Font News". Linotype.com. Retrieved 2013-09-21.
^ "Schwartzco Inc". Christianschwartz.com. Retrieved 2013-09-21.
^ "Neue Haas Grotesk". History. The Font Bureau, Inc.
^ "Neue Haas Grotesk". The Font Bureau, Inc. Retrieved 23 December 2013.
^ "Download Neue Helvetica® eText font family". Linotype.com. Retrieved 2013-09-21.
^ How to Spot Arial at Mark Simonson Studio ^ "Uses of Helvetica". Fonts In Use.
^ "Linotype Announces Helvetica NOW Poster Contest". Creativepro.com. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
^ "Helvetica NOW Poster Contest". Linotype.com. 2008-08-19. Retrieved 2009-06-08.
^ "Exhibitions 2007: 50 Years of Helvetica". Museum of Modern Art, New York. Retrieved
2008-11-16. ^ Helvetica. A New Typeface? at Disseny Hub
Barcelona ^ Pickel, Janet (1 April 2011). "April Fool's
Day: Helvetica becomes Comic Sans and Gmail Motion is on the move". The (Harrisburg, PA)
Patriot-News. Retrieved 1 April 2011.