Helvetica

In this episode of the I Can't Sleep Podcast, I read to you about the beautifully ubiquitous font Helvetica. Even if you geek out over fonts, this will surely put you to sleep tonight. Happy sleeping!

Transcript

Welcome to the I Can't Sleep podcast,

Where I read random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice.

I'm your host,

Benjamin Boster.

Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled Helvetica.

Helvetica or Noah Haas Grotesque is a widely used sans serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Mininger with input from Eduard Hoffmann.

Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design,

One influenced by the famous 19th century typeface AXIDENS GROTESK and other German and Swiss designs.

Its use became a hallmark of the international typographic style that emerged from the work of Swiss designers in the 1950s and 60s,

Becoming one of the most popular typefaces of the 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,

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-type foundry of Münchenstein,

Switzerland,

Its release was planned to match a trend,

A resurgence of interest in turn-of-the-century grotesque sans serif among European graphic designers.

That also saw the release of UNIVERSE by Adrian Frutiger the same year.

Hoffman was the president of the Haas-type foundry,

While Mininger was a freelance graphic designer who had formerly worked as a Haas salesman and designer.

Mininger and Hoffman set out to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity,

No intrinsic meaning in its form,

And could be used in a wide variety of signage.

Originally named Neue Haas Grotesk,

It was rapidly licensed by Linotype and renamed Helvetica in 1960,

Which in Latin means Swiss,

Capitalizing on Switzerland's reputation as a center 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.

The main influence on Helvetica was Oxydins Grotesque from Bertold.

Hoffman's scrapbook of proofs of the design shows careful comparison of test proofs with snippets of Oxydins Grotesque.

Its R with a curved tail resembles Shelter Grotesque,

Another turn-of-the-century sun 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 its influences.

Attracting considerable attention on its release as Neue Haas Grotesk,

Stempel and Linotype adopted Neue Haas Grotesk for release in hot metal composition,

A standard typesetting method at the time for body text,

And on the international market.

In 1960,

Its name was changed by Haas's German parent company Stempel to Helvetica in order it 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 Universe,

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 Oxydins Grotesk in New York City from around summer 1965 when Amsterdam Continental,

Which imported European typefaces,

Stopped pushing Oxydins Grotesk in its marketing and began to focus on Helvetica instead.

It was also made available for phototypesetting systems,

As well as in other formats such as Letraset dry transfers and plastic letters,

And many phototypesetting imitations and knockoffs were rapidly created by competing phototypesetting companies.

In the late 1970s and 1980s,

Linotype licensed Helvetica to Xerox,

Adobe,

And Apple,

Guaranteeing its importance in digital printing by making it one of the core fonts of the PostScript page description language.

This has led to a version being included on Macintosh computers and a metrically compatible clone,

Arial,

On Windows computers.

The rights of Helvetica are now held by Monotype Imaging,

Which acquired Linotype.

The Neue Haas Grotesk digitization discussed below was co-released with Font Bureau.

Characteristics Tall X height,

Which makes it easier to read at distance.

Light 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.

Curved stem of 7.

Two-storied A with curves of bowl and stem.

A standard neo-grotesque feature and single-story G.

Like many neo-grotesque designs,

Helvetica has narrow apertures,

Which limits its legibility on screen and its small print sizes.

It also has no visible difference between uppercase I and lowercase 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,

Trebuchet,

Or a monospaced font such as Courier,

Which makes all letters quite wide,

May be more appropriate than Helvetica.

Helvetica is among the most widely used sans-serif typefaces.

Versions exist for Latin,

Cyrillic,

Hebrew,

Greek,

Japanese,

Korean,

Hindi,

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,

American Apparel,

BASF,

Behance,

Blaupunkt,

BMW,

Diaspora,

ECM,

Funimation,

General Motors,

JCPenney,

Jeep,

Kaiser,

Permanente,

Kawasaki,

Knoll,

Kroger,

Lufthansa,

Motorola,

Nestle,

Oath,

Inc.

,

Panasonic,

Parmalat,

Philippian Airlines,

Sears,

Seiko Epson,

Skype,

Target,

Texaco,

Tupperware,

Viceland,

And Verizon.

Apple used Helvetica as the system typeface of iOS until 2015.

Helvetica has been widely used by the US government.

For example,

Federal income tax forms are set in Helvetica,

And NASA 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.

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,

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,

MTA,

Adopted Helvetica for use in signage in 1989.

From 1970 to 1989,

The standard font was Standard Medium,

An American release of Occident's Grotesque,

As defined by Unimark's New York City Transit Authority Graphic Standards Manual.

The MTA system is still rife with the proliferation of Helvetica-like fonts,

Including Arial,

In addition to some old signs in Medium Standard,

And a few anonymous signs in Helvetica Narrow.

Helvetica is also used in the Washington Metro,

The Chicago L,

Philadelphia's SEPTA,

And the Madrid Metro.

Amtrak 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 and the British Airports Authority.

The Helvetica 77 variation is used in street and house signage in Riga and other municipalities in Latvia,

Although common road signage in the country uses a version of DIN 1451.

The typeface was displaced from some users in the 1990s due to the increased availability of other fonts on digital desktop publishing systems,

And criticism from type designers including Eric Speekerman and Martin Majur,

Both of whom have criticized the design for its omnipresence and overuse.

Majur has described Helvetica as rather cheap for its failure to move on from the model of Occident's Grotesque.

Road signs in Japan and South Korea formerly used Helvetica.

IBM used Helvetica Nua as its corporate typeface until 2017,

Spending over $1 million 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.

An early essay on Helvetica's public image as a font used by business and government was written in 1976 by Leslie Slavin,

A writer on advertising at The Village Voice.

It was later published 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 Hutzwit released a documentary film,

Helvetica,

PlexiFilm DVD,

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the typeface.

In the film,

Graphic designer Wim Cowell 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.

In 2011,

The Disney Hub Barcelona displayed an exhibit called Helvetica,

A new typeface.

The exhibition included a timeline of Helvetica over the last 50 years,

Its antecedents and its subsequent influence included in the local area.

In 2011,

One of Google's April Fool's 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.

Variants A large number of variants of Helvetica were rapidly released to expand on its popularity,

Including new weights and languages.

Helvetica confessed by the time of a 1976 advertorial that things had become somewhat confused.

The series was not planned as a whole from its conception.

The series is not as uniform as Universe.

Helvetica Light Helvetica Light was designed by Stemple's artistic director,

Eric Schütz-Enker,

In conjunction with Arthur Ritzel.

Helvetica Inserate Helvetica Inserate,

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 and a more squared appearance,

Similar to Schmalth at Grotesque.

Helvetica Compressed 1966 Designed by Matthew Carter and Hans-Jörg Hunziker for Coldtype.

It shares some design elements with Helvetica Inserate,

But uses a curved tail in Q,

Downward pointing branch in R,

And tilde bottom pound.

Carter has said that in practice it was designed to be similar to Schmalth at Grotesque,

And to compete in this role with British designs Impact and Compacta,

As this style was popular at the time.

Carter,

Who also later designed Helvetica Greek,

Had designed a modernized version of Accident's Grotesque for signage at Heathrow in 1961,

And commented later,

If we'd known about Helvetica,

I'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 digitized,

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 note stated 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 format.

Recommended 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 serif to 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 Excedens Grotesque's Schulbuch.

Fontshop's FF Schulbuch is similar.

Language Variants Matthew Carter designed a Helvetica Greek in 1971.

A Cyrillic version was designed in-house in the 1970s at Die Stempel AG,

Then critiqued and redesigned in 1992 under the advice of Jovica Velijevic,

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 Universe.

The font family is made up of 51 fonts,

Including 9 weights in 3 widths,

8 in normal widths,

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 becomes in variants for Central European and Cyrillic text.

It was developed by Die Stempel AG,

A Linotype subsidiary.

The studio manager was Wolfgang Schimpf and his assistant was Reinhard Hauss.

The manager of the project was René Kerfant.

Eric Spiekermann 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 Schwarz,

Who would later release his own digitization of the original Helvetica designs,

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 Wininger'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 prior to OS X Yosemite used Lucidagrand as the system font.

The version of Helvetica Neue used as the system font in OS X 10.

10 is specially optimized.

Apple's intention is to provide a consistent experience for people who use both iOS and OS X.

Apple released Helvetica Neue with San Francisco in iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan.

Reviews

What the Helvetica was that?! Well, amazing is what is was! Amazingly boring! 😴