Miedinger and Hoffmann set out 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. 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. 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'sche Schriftgiesserei ( 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-serifs among European graphic designers, that also saw the release of Univers by Adrian Frutiger the same year. 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. 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 mid-20th century. There are many similar fonts to this typeface such as Museo Font, Museo Sans Font.Helvetica or Neue Haas Grotesk is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with input from Eduard Hoffmann.Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk and other German and Swiss designs.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. 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. Its 'R' with a curved tail resembles Schelter-Grotesk, another turn-of-the-century sans-serif sold by Haas. This design appears to use Helvetica or a close imitation.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. A 1969 poster by Robert Geisser exemplifying the "Swiss" style of the 1950s and 60s: solid red colour, simple images and neo-grotesque sans-serif type, all in lower case. 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 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. This led to a version being included on Macintosh computers and a metrically-compatible clone, Arial, on Windows computers. 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. 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 knock-offs were rapidly created by competing phototypesetting companies. The design was popular: Paul Shaw suggests that Helvetica "began to muscle out" Akzidenz-Grotesk in New York City 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. Intending to match the success of Univers, Arthur Ritzel of Stempel redesigned Neue Haas Grotesk into a larger family.Other fonts intended for legibility at small sizes such as Verdana, Meta, Trebuchet, or a monospace 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. Its tight, display-oriented spacing may also pose problems for legibility. 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. These and other letters can be a pixel away from being some other letter.Like many neo-grotesque designs, Helvetica has narrow apertures, which limits its legibility onscreen and at small print sizes. The lowercase 'e', the most common letter in English and many other languages, takes an especially unobliging form. Shapes like 'C' and 'S' curl back into themselves, leaving tight " apertures"—the channels of white between a letter's interior and exterior.
![]() Apple used Helvetica as the system typeface of iOS until 2015. Penney, Jeep, Kaiser Permanente, Kawasaki, Knoll, Kroger, LG (until 2015), Lufthansa, Motorola, Nestlé, Oath Inc., Panasonic, Parmalat, Philippine Airlines, Sears, Seiko Epson, Skype, Target, Texaco, Tupperware, Viceland, and Verizon. 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, J. Helvetica is commonly used in transportation settings. A hand-cut rubylith master used in the 1983 phototypesetting release of Helvetica Neue In the European Union, Helvetica is legally required to be used for health warnings on tobacco products such as cigarettes. 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. Helvetica is also used in the United States television rating system. Government for example, federal income tax forms are set in Helvetica, and NASA used the type on the Space Shuttle orbiter. 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. 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. Amtrak used the typeface on the "pointless arrow" logo, and it was adopted by Danish railway company DSB for a time period. Helvetica is also used in the Washington Metro, the Chicago 'L', Philadelphia's SEPTA, and the Madrid Metro. The MTA system is still rife with a proliferation of Helvetica-like fonts, including Arial, in addition to some old signs in Medium Standard, and a few anomalous signs in Helvetica Narrow. 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. IBM used Helvetica Neue as its corporate typeface until 2017, spending over $1m annually on licensing fees. Road signs in Japan and South Korea formerly used Helvetica. Majoor has described Helvetica as 'rather cheap' for its failure to move on from the model of Akzidenz-Grotesk. ![]()
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