This article is about the typeface Helvetica. For the Confoederatio Helvetica, see Switzerland. Helvetica is the name of a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger.
History
Helvetica was created 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 Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, it was created based on Schelter-Grotesk.
In 1960, the typeface's name was changed by Haas' German parent company Stempel to Helvetica — derived from Confoederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland — in order to make it more marketable internationally.
Variants
Alternative character sets
Helvetica Fractions contains only characters representing numbers, fractions, percentages.
Helvetica Central European contains only characters supporting letters found in Central European languages.
Helvetica Cyrillic contains only just enough characters supporting letters found in Basic Latin, and Cyrillic code pages.
Helvetica Greek contains only just enough characters supporting letters found in Basic Latin, and Greek code pages.
Helvetica World is a family of four fonts published by Linotype in 2002. It contains 1866 glyphs per font, supporting characters from Latin Extended, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, superscripts and subscripts, letterlike symbols, arrows, mathematical symbols, box drawing, block elements, alphabetic presentation forms, Arabic presentation forms. Similar to Arial, Arabic glyphs do not have fixed weight within each glyph.
Styling variants
Helvetica Inserat is a redrawn version of Helvetica Black Condensed that 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. Cyrillic characters are supported.
Helvetica Textbook contains monospaced version of the font. Some characters such as 1, 4, 6, 9, I, a, f, q, mu, and ¶ are drawn differently from the proportional space version.
Helvetica Rounded contains rounded stroke terminators.
Neue Helvetica
Neue Helvetica is a reworking of the typeface with a more structurally unified set of weights and widths. It was developed at D. Stempel AG, Linotype's daughter company. 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.[1] The weight and width program of Helvetica Neue is similar to that of the Univers typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger. Neue Helvetica also comes in Outline, but not Textbook or Rounded fonts.
In March 2004, Linotype announced the release of the Neue Helvetica Pro CD, which contains all 51 Neue Helvetica fonts for Mac and PC in OpenType CFF format. The character set supports a total of 48 different roman languages[2]
Neue Helvetica Central European and Neue Helvetica Cyrillic are versions containing Central European and Cyrillic characters, respectively. They do not come in OpenType variants. Unlike Neue Helvetica Central European, the Cyrillic glyphs in Neue Helvetica Cyrillic are not found in the core Neue Helvetica fonts.
Similar typefaces
Generic versions of Helvetica have been made by various vendors, including Monotype Imaging (CG Triumvirate), ParaType (Pragmatica), Bitstream (Swiss 721).
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 capital letters C, G, and R, as well as the lowercase letters a, e, r, and t, are useful for quickly distinguishing Arial and Helvetica.[3] Differences include:
- Helvetica's strokes are typically cut either horizontally or vertically. This is especially visible in the t, r, and C. Arial employs slanted stroke cuts.
- Helvetica's G has a well-defined spur; Arial does not.
- The tails of the R glyphs and the a glyphs are different.
Nimbus Sans, another similar font family that incorporates fonts designed in 1940 (Nimbus Sans bold condensed, Nimbus Sans bold condensed (D)) and 1946 (Nimbus Sans Black Condensed, Nimbus Sans Black Condensed (D)), is produced by URW. Nimbus Sans L fonts were released under the GNU General Public License.
"Helv", later known as "MS Sans Serif", is a sans-serif font 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 the Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Greek alphabets. Unicode character sets include special characters and accents for Hindi, Urdu, Khmer, and Vietnamese. Variants of character-based writing systems, including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, have been developed to complement Helvetica.
Major companies and products that have used Helvetica in their wordmarks include 3M, Acxiom, American Airlines, American Apparel, the former American Telephone & Telegraph Company, BBC News, Border Television, Crate & Barrel, Energizer Batteries, Five, Greyhound Lines, ITV, Jeep, Karlsberger, Lufthansa, Marks & Spencer, Microsoft, National Car Rental, Now That's What I Call Music!, Panasonic, Target Corporation, Thames Television, and Yorkshire Television.
Apple, Inc.'s Mac OS X uses Helvetica as its default font for numerous applications, and the interfaces for the iPhone and newer iPods use Helvetica almost exclusively. New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) uses Helvetica for all of its subway signs (though some pre-1968 signs sport the similar Medium Standard, an Akzidenz Grotesk-like sans-serif).
Canada's federal government uses Helvetica as its identifying typographic voice, and encourages its use in all federal agencies and websites.[4] Helvetica is also used in the USA television rating system (TV-G, TV-Y, TV-Y7, etc.)
Helvetica is widely used by the U.S. government; for example, federal income tax forms are set in Helvetica, and the NASA space agency uses the type on the Space Shuttle Orbiter.[5]
Media coverage
In 2007, Linotype GmbH held Helvetica NOW Poster Contest to celebrate 50th anniversary of the font.[6][7] Winners were announced in January 2008 issue of the LinoLetter.
In 2007, director Gary Hustwit released a documentary, Helvetica, 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."
From April 2007 to March 2008, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City displayed an exhibit called "50 Years of Helvetica",[8] which celebrated the many usages of the font.
Awards
Helvetica was rated number one on the FontShop list "Germany's Best Fonts of All Time".[9]
References
External links
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