H A P P Y 5 0 T H
From Helvetica: Homage to a Typeface by Lars Müller
BY BRADLEY WILSON
4 • COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY
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A N N I V E R S A R Y V
50 YEARS OF HELVETICA April 6, 2007March 31, 2008 Modern Museum of Art The Philip Johnson Architecture and Design Galleries, third floor In honor of the first typeface acquired for MoMA’s collection, the installation presents posters, signage and other graphic material demonstrating the variety of uses and enduring beauty of this design classic. As a special feature in the exhibition, an excerpt of Gary Hustwit’s documentary Helvetica reveals the typeface as we experience it in an everyday context.
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ietnam newspapers ran an article about it. Radio shows devoted five minutes and 30 seconds to it. The New York Museum of Modern Art created an entire exhibit on it. At the South By Southwest Film Festival this spring, a full-length film devoted to the font debuted. Font geeks everywhere groaned as Helvetica, the ubiquitous font on everything from street signs to eye charts, celebrated its 50th anniversary. Justifiably so. Perhaps no single font has attained such widespread use, from the logos of American Airlines, American Apparel, Comme des Garçons, Evian, Intel, Lufthansa, Nestlé to Toyota. Now is the time to take a look at Helvetica and the impact it has had on the design world during the last 50 years. HISTORY ACCORDING TO LINOTYPE
Helvetica is one of the most famous and popular typefaces in the world. It lends an air of lucid efficiency to any typographic message with its clean, no-nonsense shapes. The original typeface, called Haas Grotesk, was designed in 1957 by Max Miedinger for the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) in Switzerland. In 1960, the name was changed to Helvetica (an adaptation of “Helvetia,” the Latin name for Switzerland). Over the decades, the Helvetica family was expanded to include many different weights, but these were not as well coordinated with one another as they might have been. In 1983, D. Stempel AG and Linotype redesigned and digitized Neue Helvetica and updated it into a cohesive font family.
Today, the original Helvetica family consists of 34 different font weights, and the Neue Helvetica family consists of 51 font weights. FROM AN ARTICLE BY FINLO ROHRER BBC News Magazine, May 9, 2007
Frank Wildenberg, managing director of Linotype: “It’s durable. It comes from natural design forms. It doesn’t have an expression of fashion. It has very clear lines and characters. It looks like a very serious typeface.” Lars Mueller, author of Helvetica: Homage to a Typeface: “It has a modern attitude which lines up with the aesthetic premises of the 1950s and ‘60s. Helvetica is a corporate typeface, but, on the other hand, it’s the favorite of hairdressers and kebab shops. It is the butter on the bread.” Typographer Neville Brody: “When people choose Helvetica, they want to fit in and look normal. They use Helvetica because they want to be a member of the efficiency club. They want to be a member of modernism. They want to be a member of no personality. It also says bland, unadventurous, unambitious.” IN RESPONSE TO ROHER’S ARTICLE
Ian Kendrick, Wirral, United Kingdom: “Helvetica is a very large type family, not just one face. Proper Helvetica is OK, clean and simple and well formed, but the digital so-called clone Arial is horrid as are all such faces in my view. They lack the subtlety and elegance of the originals. But give me Gill Sans any day, designed by stonecutter Eric Gill as a tribute to Johnston’s competition (to design it) winning London Underground face. Both are based on straight lines and circles. The BBC
HELVETICA: HOMAGE TO A TYPEFACE By Lars Müller ©2005 This book sings the praises of Helvetica and of its forgotten creator and all those who have contributed to its unparalleled international march of triumph during the past 40 years. Filled with pages of color images of Helvetica in use, from album covers and road signs to advertisements and product packaging, the designs gathered together in honor of Helvetica have been created by superb designers and anonymous amateurs from all over the world.
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uses Gill, and it always looks cool to me. The digital clones don’t look as good as the original in the case of Gill too. Like I say, proper Helvetica is OK. But don’t get me started on Comic Sans. I said don’t.” Barry P. Havant, England: “This discussion is almost as important as whether cucumber sandwiches should be cut on the diagonal or the square.” ACCORDING TO AN ARTICLE BY FRANK JORDANS Associated Press, April 9, 2007
Christian Larsen, curator of the New York Museum of Modern Art: “Helvetica is one of those typefaces that everybody knows, everybody sees, but they don’t really see it at the same time because it’s so good at its job. It communicates efficiently and quickly without imposing itself. “It communicates a lot of the qualities we attribute to the Swiss. The idea of the rational, functional, neutral and universal.”
atSCGR atSCGR HELVETICA
ARIAL
HOW TO SPOT ARIAL By Mark Simonson • The “a” in Helvetica has a tail; Arial does not. Also, the bowl of the “a” flows into the stem like a backwards “s”; the bowl of Arial’s “a” simply intersects the stem with a slight curve. • The top of the Arial “t” is cut off at an angle; the Helvetica “t” is cut off straight.
• The ends of the strokes of letters like “S” and “C” are perfectly horizontal in Helvetica; in Arial and Grotesque they are cut off at a slight angle.
• The “G” in Helvetica has a spur at the bottom of the stem on the right side and the curve at the bottom of the “G” flows into the stem; in Arial and Grotesque the “G” has no spur and the curve at the bottom meets the stem at an angle. • The tail of the “R” in Helvetica flows out from the bowl and curves straight down, ending in a slight curve to the right. In Arial, the tail flows down and to the right from near the center of the horizontal bar and straightens out at an angle to the end.
MORE: http://www.ms-studio.com/articlesarialsid.html
6 • COMMUNICATION: JOURNALISM EDUCATION TODAY
ACCORDING TO MARK PORTER, DESIGNER
“Among the insecurities of the post-war era, Helvetica evoked a utopian future of unblemished perfection, and a large part of its success is surely attributable to the fact that its spare functional look seems to offer a reassuring antidote to the grubby uncertainties that surround us. “It was a perfect match for the values of the burgeoning aviation industry and is still used by American Airlines and Lufthansa. But it is also a favorite of iconic fashion brands like American Apparel and Comme des Garçons. Maybe its very familiarity now allows it to represent a minimalism and chic that just doesn’t have to try too hard.” FROM AN ARTICLE BY ALICE RAWSTHORN, International Herald Tribune, April 1, 2007
Danny van den Dungen of Experimental Jetset, the Dutch graphic design team: “Why do some people find it so strange that a typeface should be used for over 50 years? When something is constructed as well as Helvetica, it should last for a couple of hundred years, just like great architecture.” n
HELVETICA
Ultra Compressed Light Condensed Light Condensed Oblique Medium Condensed Medium Condensed Oblique Bold Condensed Bold Condensed Oblique Black Condensed Black Condensed Oblique Light Light Oblique Black Black Oblique Neue Condensed Bold Neue Condensed Black Neue Ultralight Neue Ultralight Italic Neue Light Neue Light Italic Neue Regular Neue Italic Neue Bold Neue Bold Italic ARIAL
Arial Arial Italic Arial Bold Arial Bold Italic
HELVETICA
2007. Directed by Gary Hustwit. Image courtesy of Gary Hustwit Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. Helvetica will screen at film festivals, museums, design conferences and cinemas worldwide, followed by the DVD release this fall. The world premiere was at the South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, March 13, 2007. MORE: http://www.helveticafilm.com
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