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HELVETICA
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helvetica
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“When something is constructed as well as Helvetica, it should last for a couple of hundred years, just like great architecture.� -Danny van den Dungen-
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ABCDEFG HIJKLMN OPQRST UV W X YZ abcdefghi jklmnopqr stuvwxyz 1234567890 ?.!,(*�&#@$}>
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Helvetica is considered as a sans-
serif type face. It has been used
widely since first invented on 1957. It is the most ubiquitous
design that represent clarity and
simplicity of modernism. It is neutral and democratic, it can be used in a wide variety scope, be it as a display text, or a bodytext.
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short history
H
elvetica was developed by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundryin Münchenstein, Switzerland. It was modeled after Akzidenz-Grotesk (thefirst sansserif) and the design was based on Schelter-Grotesk and Haas’ Normal Grotesk. It is originally named Neue Hass Grotesk, but then changed to ‘Helvetia’, which is the original Latin name for Switzerland, in 1960 by Haas’ German parent company, Stempel Company. But Eduard Hoffmann disagree, he thought it wouldn’t be appropriate to name a type after a country. He then decided on ‘Helvetica’ which meant ‘Swiss’.
acknowledgement In 2007, director Gary Hustwit released a documentary, Helvetica, to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the typeface. On 2008 a Helvetica exhibition was held at Laforet Museum in Harajuku, sponsored by Grand Petit Publishing and Asmik Ace Entertainment, with screenings of the film, workshops, and more. The Japanese edition of the film was released during that time. Also, an exhibition called “50 Years of Helvetica” was dispkayed in Museum of Modern Art in New York City from April 2007 to March 2008. Helvetica was rated #1 on FontShop Germany’s list “Best Fonts of All Time”.
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LANGUAGE VERSIONS L a t i n , C y r i l l i c , H e b re w, G re e k , J a p a n e s e , K o re a n , H i n d i , U rd u , Vi e t n a m e s e a n d e v e n K h m e r.
The Chinnese is still developed.
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USAGE Helvetica is a popular choice for commercial wordmark. There are many company that uses Helvetica for their logo, such as Nestle, Kawasaki, Evian, BMW, Microsoft, Muji, Tupperware, Mattel, Energizer, Target, Orange, Lufthansa, Panasonic and many more. Helvetica is used by Apple Inc. in Mac OS X (as default font for sans-serif/Swiss generic font family), iOS (previously iPhone OS), and the iPod. It is also widely used by the U.S. government; for example, federal income tax forms are set in Helvetica, and NASA uses the type on the Space Shuttle orbiter.
N e w Yo r k C i t y New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority uses Helvetica for many of its subway signs since 1989. Before that, from 1970 until 1989 the standard font was Standard Medium, another Akzidenz Grotesk-like sans-serif, as defined by Unimark’s New York City Transit Authority Graphic Standards Manual. The MTA system is still rife with a proliferation of Helvetica-like fonts, including Arial, in addition to some old remaining signs in Medium Standard, and a few anomalous signs in Helvetica Narrow.
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C h i c a g o The Chicago Transit Authority uses Helvetica on its signage for the Chicago ‘L’. 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. Additionally, it was also adopted by Danish railway company DSB for a time period.
C a n a d a Canada’s federal government 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.
Philadelphia M a d r i d Philadelphia’s SEPTA uses Helvetica exclusively for its signage.
The logo and graphic identity of the “Metro” (Underground) in Madrid are Helvetica Regular and Helvetica Neue.
United States Helvetica is also used in the United States television rating system.
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When he was 16, Max Miedinger became an apprentice typesetter at a book printing office in Zurich. After four years of appren¬ticeship, he entered the School of Arts and
Max Miedinger
Crafts, Abendkurse in Zurich.
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the designer
“THE PERSON BEHIND THE FAME OF HELVETICA” At 26, he became a typographer in the ad¬vertising studio of the Globe department store chain where he refined his skills for ten years. From there he moved on to the Haas Type Foundry. He was an independent designer after leaving the Haas Foundry. Miedinger also designed Helvetica, Helvetica Condensed, Helvetica Inserat, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica Textbook, Monospace 821 and Swiss 721.
The fact that the typeface is clean-cut and simple means that it can be used as a neutral platform in a wide variety of settings, it is the particular context and content of the messages that convey their meaning.The optimism with which Helvetica was created and taken up worldwide proved it had all the right qualities for rejuvenating attitudes to and uses of design. The great thing about Helvetica is that no matter the size, the spacing or the lewading, you can still see the consistency and that is the beauty of Helvetica. Due to widespread use, Miedinger’s font grew into an anonymous, almost generic-looking font. Because it was embraced and used so often, it became the norm. In fact, the Helvetica font ended up being the default font choice almost from its inception. And when laser printers and desktop publishing software took off, Helvetica had a firm foundation as the sans serif font of choice.
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Helvetica means “Swiss� which is appropriate because Helvetica uses the Swiss style of graphic design which relies heavily on sans serif styling and a preference for photography over illustrations. 9.
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helvetica can be fun
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v i
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lnl
the family smart 11. think think neutral
Helvetica Condensed Bold
Helvetica Condensed Black Helvetica Ultra Light Helvetica Light Helvetica Light Italic Helvetica Regular Helvetica Italic Helvetica Helvetica Ultra Light
Medium Helvetica Bold Helvetica Bold Italic
3 3 YY
Y 3
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Y Y
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Y 3 Y Y
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E V L E H A C I T LVE E H CA I T LVE E H A C I T LVE E H CA I T LVE E H CA smart 13. think think neutral
comparison Helvetica might look the same as the rest of sans-serif t y p e f a c e , b u t a c t u a l l y H e l v e t i c a i s u n i q u e i n i t ’s o w n w a y.
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There were other fonts released in 1957 besides Helvetica. Those fonts are Univers and Folio. The three of them are sometimes confused with each other, because each is based on the 1898 typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk.
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After Helvetica was released, lots of similar fonts were created and among them are these popular fonts: Arial, Futura, and Gill Sans.
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vari Helvetica Light
Designed by Stempel’s artistic director Erich Schultz-Anker, in conjunction with Arthur Ritzel.
Helvetica Narrow
The width is between Helvetica Compressed and Helvetica Condensed. It is mathematically squashed to 82% of the original width, resulting in distorted letterforms and thin vertical strokes next to thicker horizontals. Adobe doesn not allowed such distortion and so Helvetica Condensed is recommended instead.
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ants Helvetica Textbook 1, 4, 6, 9, I, J, a, f, j, q, u, μ, and ¶ are drawn differently from the original version.
Helvetica Compressed Designed by Matthew Carter. Tighter than Helvetica Condensed. It has a curved tail Q, downward pointing branch in r and tilde bottom £. The family consists of : Helvetica Compressed, Helvetica Extra Compressed, Helvetica Ultra Compressed fonts.
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Helvetica Inserat
1957
Helvetica Rounded
1978
Helvetica World
1978
Usage : advertising industry. Similar metric as Helvetica Black Condensed, but more squared appearance. The strokes in $, ¢ are replaced by non-strikethrough version and the 4 is opened at top
Has rounded stroke terminators. The family consists: bold, bold oblique, blactk, black oblique, bold condensed, bold outline fonts were made
Also called Helvetica Linotype. It supports Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew and Vietnamese scripts. The family consists of 4 fonts in 2 weights and 1 width, with complementary italics. Latin kerning and spacing were redesigned to have consistent spacing.
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1983
Neue Helvetica
Neue Helvetica has heavier punctuation marks, increased spacing in the numbers and more structurally unified set of heights and widths. Uses a numerical design classification scheme, like Univers. The family consists of 51 fonts including 9 weights in 3 widths (8, 9, 8 in normal, condensed, extended widths respectively).
2009
Neue Helvetica W1G
Extra versions: Latin Extended, Greek, Cyrillic scripts support, including subscript or superscript
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Bracketed top serif of number 1 Wide bowl and rounded off square tail of R The uppercase G has a spur and wide bar The terminal of the small f is close Helvetica has small open counter to its cross stroke and the lenght for both uppercase and lowercase of the terminal and the cross ‘c’ and smallcase ‘e’ stem is the same It has a double-storey ‘a’ with a curvy tail and the eye looks like a tear drop
Characteristics
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a
a ---eye---
Double-storey a with a curvy tail and the eye looks like a tear drop
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R ---bowl--
Wide bowl and rounded off square tail of R
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Cce Small open counter
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Facts It is a free commision font and so it is used widely.
Helvetica is a type face with titling figures, means that the letters have consistent height, it is the exactopposite of text figures (ex: Georgia).
It is best for bodytext, although Helvetica doesn’t have two-storey “g” it’s still easy to read as a paragraph because the x-height is quite tall and the width is quite narrow.
It’s still okay for a display font because the uppercase letter stands out and suitable to give a modern futuristic feelings.
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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. Wim Crouwel
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HELVETICA Š Bernadeta Sugianto
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