So why has Helvetica been so successful? Its appeal undoubtedly stems from its versatility, modern appearance and understated elegance, which make it suitable for everything from posters and instruction manuals to art catalogues.
The following year, Steve Jobs decided to include it in the fonts available on the first Macintosh, paving the way for the spread of the digital version of the typeface. The first restyling and its entry into the digital worldġ983 saw the release of Neue Helvetica, an updated version of the font created by Linotype’s graphic design studio, with extra spacing between the numbers and heavier punctuation marks to improve legibility. The Graphic Standards Manual, designed by Vignelli and Noorda. The font remained one of Vignelli’s trademark features, significantly boosting Helvetica’s international renown. Towards the end of the 1960s, Helvetica was chosen by the designers Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda to create the new signage for the New York Metro and the Graphic Standards Manual, one of the most famous visual identity manuals in the history of graphic design. The font instantly became an icon of Swiss design, which at the time was seen to epitomise understated elegance and functionality, and throughout the 1960s and 1970s it appeared on numerous advertising posters and billboards across Europe and the USA. Stempel AG – a German firm that worked in partnership with the Lynotype Company – to redesign and develop the family of fonts. In 1960, Parker decided to adopt Neue Haas Grotesk, and asked Arthur Ritzel, a designer from D. Parker was given the task of expanding the font library owned by the company, and between 19 he managed to add almost 1,000, in many cases adapting pre-existing fonts to suit the technical demands of the Linotype machines. In 1959, Mike Parker was appointed director of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, an American firm that sold Linotype typewriters, the first machines to automatically assemble rows of characters. Mike Parker, the man who changed Helevetica’s fate Technically speaking, Neue Haas Grotesk had several interesting features: the negative (white) space surrounding the letters and the lines comprising the font were perfectly balanced, and the strokes were always horizontal or vertical, and never diagonal, creating a visual effect that was simultaneously bold and neutral. Eduard Hoffmann’s notes documenting the creation of the font Neue Haas Grotesk.
It was a sans serif font with a linear, simple and elegant design, and this no-frills look meant it was extremely legible. In 1957, Miedinger came up with a new set of characters, which he named Neue Haas Grotesk. His aim was to counter the success of Akzidenz Grotesk, the typeface launched by their competitors, the H. In this article we will start by looking at its invention way back in 1957, before going through the various milestones and restyles that have seen it become many international brands’ go-to typeface.Īs its name suggests (based on ‘Helvetia’, the Latin word for ‘Switzerland’), Helvetica was created in Switzerland, when Eduard Hoffmann, director of the Haus foundry in Münchenstein, decided to commission freelance designer Max Alfons Miedinger to create a new font.
But to what does it owe its success and its widespread usage, and how has it changed over the years? Love it or hate it, Helvetica is one of the world’s most commonly used fonts, both in advertising and publishing and in urban signage. Helvetica: the story of a font adored by brands
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