Helvetica - WikiHQ

Helvetica, also known by its original name Neue Haas Grotesk, is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and 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. Its use became a hallmark of the International Typographic Style that emerged from the work of Swiss designers in the 1950s and 1960s, becoming one of the most popular typefaces of the mid-20th century. 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. 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 (Basel), 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. 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.

Originally named Neue Haas Grotesk (New Haas Grotesque), it was soon licensed by Linotype and renamed Helvetica in 1960, which in Latin means , from , capitalising on Switzerland's reputation as a centre of ultra-modern graphic design.

History

thumb|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 lowercase. This design appears to use Helvetica or a close imitation.

The first version of the typeface (which later became known as Helvetica) was designed in by Max Miedinger with art direction by Eduard Hoffmann. His goal was to create a new sans-serif typeface that could compete in the Swiss market as a neutral face that should not be given any additional meaning. The primary 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. 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.

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.

In , Stempel (the German parent company of Haas) changed the typeface's name to Helvetica, to make it more marketable internationally; it comes from the Latin name for the pre-Roman tribes of what became Switzerland. Intending to match the success of Univers, Arthur Ritzel of Stempel redesigned Neue Haas Grotesk into a larger typeface family. 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. 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.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Linotype licensed Helvetica to IBM, Xerox, Adobe, and Apple, guaranteeing its importance in digital printing by making it one of the core computer fonts of the PostScript page description language. The phototype and digital versions were derived from the 12-point metal type. This led to a version being included on Macintosh computers, with Arial (a metrically compatible clone) included with Microsoft Windows computers. 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.

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Like many neo-grotesque designs, Helvetica has narrow apertures, which limit its legibility onscreen and at small print sizes. It also has no visible difference between upper-case 'i' and lower-case 'L', although the number 1 is reasonably identifiable with its flag at top left. Its tight, display-oriented spacing may also pose problems for legibility. Other computer 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.

Usage examples

Helvetica is among the most widely used sans-serif typefaces. Helvetica is a common choice for commercial wordmarks: in 2007, the BBC remarked that a list of users "would fill this page".

Helvetica has been widely used by the U.S. government; for example, federal income tax forms are set in Helvetica. The Canadian government also uses Helvetica as its identifying typeface and encourages its use in all federal agencies and websites. Helvetica is commonly used in transportation settings. New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) adopted Helvetica for use in signage in 1989. Helvetica is also used in the Washington Metro, the Chicago 'L', Philadelphia's SEPTA, the Madrid Metro, and the Toronto subway, and in some airports like Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix Sky Harbor, and Vancouver.

The typeface was displaced from some uses in the 1990s to the increased availability of other fonts on digital desktop publishing systems, and criticism from type designers including Erik Spiekermann and Martin Majoor, both of whom have criticized the design for its omnipresence and overuse. Majoor has described Helvetica as 'rather cheap' for its failure to move on from the model of Akzidenz-Grotesk.

Helvetica was used on signage and markings on Space Shuttle spacecraft.

Media coverage

thumb|An early Helvetica specimen in the asymmetric Swiss modernist style, showing tight spacing in the poster style of the period

An early essay on Helvetica's public image as a typeface used by business and government was written in 1976 by Leslie Savan, a writer on advertising at the Village Voice. It was later republished in her book The Sponsored Life.

In 2007, Linotype GmbH held the Helvetica NOW Poster Contest to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the typeface. Winners were announced in the January 2008 issue of the LinoLetter.

In 2007, director Gary Hustwit released a documentary film, Helvetica (Plexifilm, DVD), 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." The documentary also presented other designers who associated Helvetica with authority and corporate dominance, and whose rebellion from Helvetica's ubiquity created new styles.

From April 2007 to March 2008, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City displayed an exhibit called "50 Years of Helvetica". In 2011 the Disseny Hub Barcelona displayed an exhibit called Helvetica. A New Typeface?. The exhibition included a timeline of Helvetica over the last fifty years, its antecedents and its subsequent influence, including in the local area.

In 2011, one of Google's April Fools' Day jokes centred on the use of Helvetica. If a user attempted to search for the term "Helvetica" using the search engine, the results would be displayed in Comic Sans.

Variants

thumb|left|Comparison of distinguishing characters in [[Akzidenz-Grotesk, Folio, Helvetica, and Univers 55]]

A large number of variants of Helvetica were rapidly released to expand on its popularity, including new weights and languages. Linotype confessed by the time of a 1976 advertorial that things had become somewhat confused: "the series was not planned as a whole from its conception...the series is not as uniform as Univers".

Helvetica Light

Helvetica Light was designed by Stempel's artistic director Erich Schultz-Anker, in conjunction with Arthur Ritzel.

Helvetica Inserat

Helvetica Inserat (German for advertisement) is a version designed primarily for use in the advertising industry: this is a narrow variant that is tighter than Helvetica Black Condensed. It gives the glyphs an even larger x-height and a more squared appearance, similar to Schmalfette Grotesk. Adobe's release notes date it to 1966 and state that it originated with Stempel.

Helvetica Compressed (1966)

Designed by Matthew Carter and Hans-Jürg Hunziker for phototypesetting. It shares some design elements with Helvetica Inserat, but uses a curved tail in Q, downward pointing branch in r, and tilde bottom £. Carter has said that in practice it was designed to be similar to Schmalfette Grotesk and to compete in this role with British designs Impact and Compacta, as this style was popular at the time. Carter, who also later designed Helvetica Greek, had designed a modernised version of Akzidenz-Grotesk for signage at London Heathrow Airport in 1961, and commented later "if we'd known about [Helvetica] I'm sure we would have used it, since it's a much better typeface than the one I drew. But the typesetting trade was very conservative then, and new type designs traveled slowly." The family consists of Helvetica Compressed, Helvetica Extra Compressed and Helvetica Ultra Compressed faces. It has been digitised, for instance in the Adobe Helvetica release.

Helvetica Rounded (1978)

Helvetica Rounded is a version containing rounded stroke terminators, released for bold weights. Linotype's release notes date it to 1978.

Helvetica Narrow

Helvetica Narrow is a version where its width is between Helvetica Compressed and Helvetica Condensed. This computer font was developed when memory space in electronic printers was very scarce, so it was created by mathematically squashing Helvetica to 82% of the original width, resulting in distorted letterforms, with vertical strokes narrowed but horizontals unchanged. Because of the distortion problems, Adobe dropped Helvetica Narrow in its release of Helvetica in OpenType format, recommending users choose Helvetica Condensed instead.

Helvetica Textbook

Helvetica Textbook is an alternate design of the typeface, which uses 'schoolbook' stylistic alternates to increase distinguishability: a serifed capital 'i' and 'j' to increase distinguishability, a 'q' with a flick upwards and other differences, such as the digits '1' and '4' similar to how handwritten digits are. The letters 'a', 't', 'u', and the digits '6' and '9' are replaced with designs similar to those in geometric sans-serifs such as those found in Futura, Akzidenz-Grotesk Schulbuch, and Avant Garde (except for 'u'). FontShop's FF Schulbuch is similar.

Language variants

Helvetica Greek has gone through several versions. Letraset designed a semi-official version for their dry transfer lettering system, available by 1970, which sold well but was considered unidiomatic by Linotype. Linotype published a 1971 version designed by Matthew Carter which was available for phototypesetting and so for general purpose printing such as extended text. Carter felt in 1974 that the Letraset version was "a poor thing" and Linotype's version was "the real one" but that Letraset's was well-enough accepted in Greece that he felt it had "caused resistance to our version".

Helvetica World

Helvetica World supports Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, and Vietnamese scripts.

This typeface family consists of four scalable fonts in two weights and one width, with complementary italics.

The Arabic glyphs were based on a redesigned Yakout font family from Linotype. Latin kerning and spacing were redesigned to have consistent spacing. John Hudson of Tiro Typeworks designed the Hebrew glyphs for the font family, as well as the Cyrillic, and Greek letters.

Neue Helvetica (1983)

thumb|A hand-cut [[rubylith master used in the 1983 phototypesetting release of Neue Helvetica]]

thumb|right|Varying Neue Helvetica typeface weights

Neue Helvetica (German for "New Helvetica"; ), sometimes Helvetica Neue in some digital files, Neue Helvetica also comes in variants for Central European and Cyrillic text.

It was developed at D. Stempel AG, a Linotype subsidiary. The studio manager was Wolfgang Schimpf, assisted by 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. Figures were widened and some condensed weights changed from having nearly flat-sided verticals to a more continuous curve throughout the entire height.

iOS used first Helvetica then Neue Helvetica as its system font. All releases of macOS prior to OS X Yosemite (10.10) used Lucida Grande as the system font. The version of Neue Helvetica used as the system font in OS X 10.10 is specially optimised; Apple's intention is to provide a consistent experience for people who use both iOS and OS X. Apple replaced Neue Helvetica with the similar-looking San Francisco in iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan (10.11), meaning OS X 10.10 was the only macOS version to use Neue Helvetica as the system font.

Neue Helvetica W1G (2009)

Neue Helvetica W1G is a version with support for Latin Extended, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts. Only OpenType CFF font format was released.

The family includes the fonts from the older Neue Helvetica counterparts, except Neue Helvetica 75 Bold Outline. Additional OpenType features include subscript/superscript.

Neue Helvetica Arabic (2009)

thumb|Helvetica Arabic

Designed by Lebanese designer Nadine Chahine, it is a version with Arabic script support. Only OpenType TTF font format was released.

The family includes three fonts in three weights and one width, without italics (45, 55, 65).

Neue Helvetica eText (2011)

It is a version of Neue Helvetica optimised for on-screen use, designed by Akira Kobayashi of Monotype Imaging. Changes from Neue Helvetica include more open spacing. Unlike Helvetica, the capitals are reduced in size so the lower-case ascenders rise above them, a common feature associated with text typefaces.

(Neue) Helvetica Thai (2012)

Anuthin Wongsunkakon, a Thai type designer of Cadson Demak Co., created Thai versions of Helvetica and Neue Helvetica fonts. The design uses loopless terminals in Thai glyphs, which had also been used by Wongsunkakon's previous design, Manop Mai (New Manop).

Neue Helvetica Georgian (2015)

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It is a version with Georgian script support. Designed by Akaki Razmadze at Monotype Bad Homburg.

Only OpenType CFF and TTF font formats were released.

The family includes eight fonts in eight weights and one width, without italics (25, 35, 45, 55, 65, 75, 85, 95).

Neue Helvetica Armenian (2016)

The family includes 16 fonts in 8 weights (ultra light, thin, light, regular, medium, bold, heavy, black) with complementary italics.

Neue Helvetica World (2017)

Designed by Nadine Chahine, Linotype Design Studio, Monotype Design Studio and Edik Ghabuzyan, Neue Helvetica World has support for the Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Armenian, Georgian and Vietnamese scripts, for a total of 181 languages. It also has complete support for Unicode block u+0400. Published in November 2017 by Linotype, it was released in Truetype and OpenType CFF formats.

The family includes 6 fonts in 3 weights (45 Light, 55 Roman, 75 Bold), with complementary italic. Roman fonts include 1,708 glyphs and 1,285 glyphs for italics.

For working with other languages, the publisher also recommended following the complementary fonts:

Devanagari: Saral Devanagari
Japanese: Tazugane Gothic, Yu Gothic
Korean: YD Gothic 100, YD Gothic 700
Simplified Chinese: M Ying Hei PRC, M Hei PRC
Traditional Chinese: M Ying Hei HK, M Hei HK

Neue Haas Grotesk (2010)

thumb|Neue Haas Grotesk Text, optically optimised for body text

Christian Schwartz's digitisation is based on original settings of the metal type and uses the typeface's original name. It was released by Linotype (later Monotype Imaging), Commercial Type, and Font Bureau with an article on the history of Helvetica by Professor Indra Kupferschmid.

Unlike earlier digitisations, Schwartz created two different optical sizes (labelled Text and Display), which have different spacing metrics giving tighter spacing at display size and looser spacing to increase legibility in body text. The release includes a number of features not present on digitisations branded as Helvetica, stylistic alternates such as separate punctuation sets for upper- and lower-case text, "modernist" cedilla designs styled to match the comma and reduced-height numbers to blend into extended text. Both optical sizes provide stylistic alternates for a straight-legged upper case "R", while the Display variant additionally provides stylistic alternates for a lower case "a" without tail. It originated from an abandoned redesign plan for The Guardian newspaper. Writing for Typographica, Matthew Butterick described the release as better than any previous digital release of Helvetica: "it's never looked better". Users include Bloomberg Businessweek, the Whitney Museum, and for the album Midnights by Taylor Swift. Schwartz's company Commercial Type have additionally developed a companion monospaced version, agate version for small sizes and stencil font. The release does not include condensed weights or support for Greek and Cyrillic.

Variable Font Version

The Text optical size of Neue Haas Grotesk is available on Windows 11 via "Pan-European Supplemental Fonts" optional feature. This version is a variable font and provides weights ranging from Ultra Thin to Black. As of 2023, the variable font version of Neue Haas Grotesk is not yet otherwise available.

Neue Haas Grotesk Text is also available on Windows 10 via "Pan-European Supplemental Fonts", but this release includes static fonts instead of variable fonts.

Helvetica Now (2019)

In April 2019, Monotype announced an update of Neue Helvetica called "Helvetica Now", designed by Jan Hendrik Weber and Charles Nix of Monotype Imaging. The family has one width in three optical sizes, Text, Micro and Display in 8, 6, and 10 weights respectively. The condensed version corresponding to these optical sizes and weights was published later in 2021, along with Helvetica Now Variable.

A key difference among the three optical sizes is the terminal design: Display retains the horizontal terminals in previous digital releases of Helvetica; Micro features diagonal terminals for many characters (e.g., lowercase "e" and "c"); while the design of Text is somewhere in between Display and Micro.

Features include circled figures and redesigned arrow and @ glyphs. It also includes a number of alternate characters including curled lower-case "L", spurless rounded "G", a straight-legged "R" (found in Neue Haas Grotesk), single-story "a" (found in Helvetica Textbook) and lowercase "u" without a spur.

Helvetica Now Variable (2022)

Helvetica Now was also released as a variable font, which has two styles (Regular and Italic) and three adjustable axes (weight, width, and optical size). Supported weight ranges include hairline to extra black, optical sizes include four point to infinity, widths include compressed and condensed.

Helvetica clones

Derivative designs based on Helvetica were rapidly developed, taking advantage of the lack of copyright protection in the phototypesetting typeface market of the 1960s onward. Many are straight clones intended to be direct substitutes and almost indistinguishable from Helvetica, while some add subtle differences. In addition, some typefaces such as Liberation Sans were meant to be metrically equivalent to Helvetica, without directly mimicking Helvetica's design.

thumb|Three official releases of Helvetica compared to five clones at the same font size. This shows that, while some are straight clones, others differ metrically.

A prominent Helvetica clone is Nimbus Sans, developed by URW under the leadership of Peter Karow. Nimbus Sans L (simply called Nimbus Sans in the open-source sphere) would become a standard typeface in many Linux distributions and open-source applications such as R, adding to its popularity. This version of Nimbus Sans L is the basis of other open-source typefaces, including TeX Gyre Heros and FreeSans.

thumb|TeX Gyre Heros – a [[Fork (software development)|fork of Nimbus Sans released under the GUST Font License]]

Other Helvetica clones include Bitstream's Swiss 721, ParaType's Pragmatica, Scangraphic's Europa Grotesk and Europa Grotesk No. 2, and Compugraphic's CG Triumvirate. Berthold responded to Helvetica's popularity with Akzidenz-Grotesk Buch, effectively a Helvetica clone. More recent clones include Antique Legacy and Haas Recast.

Besides imitations created by Linotype's then-competitors, custom derivatives of Helvetica were sometimes made to include special-order characters, notably a straight-legged 'R' and round-topped 'A'.

Optical sizes

thumb|A comparison between the display versions of two official releases and a clone at the same x-height. Although the typefaces share the same root, they metrically differ.

The official digital releases of Helvetica did not have optical sizes until Neue Haas Grotesk (2010) introduced a Text version and a Display version. Some Helvetica clones, however, had optical sizes prior to that. Nimbus Sans has D (Display) and P (Poster) versions, both designed for big text, while the P version has tighter spacing. Both Europa Grotesk and Europa Grotesk No. 2 have two optical sizes: SH (Scangraphic Headline, designed for display) and SB (Scangraphic Bodytypes, designed for text).

More recently, Haas Recast has an Open version and a Dense version, along with the respective tracking axis for the variable font version.

Language extension

Many Helvetica clones have variations with extra language support. Nimbus Sans has versions supporting Arabic and Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Devanagari scripts. Swiss 721 has variations that cover pan-European, Hebrew, and Devanagari languages. Pragmatica has pan-European support. FreeSans is part of the GNU FreeFont project and has extensive Unicode coverage.

thumb|A comparison of Greek characters between Neue Helvetica World and three Helvetica clones at the same x-height. Many subtle differences can be seen.

thumb|A comparison of Thai characters between Neue Helvetica World and Nimbus Sans Thai at the same x-height, the former of which does not have terminal loops.

The non-Latin characters of these typefaces were usually developed independently. This means, although their Latin characters are based on Helvetica and share similar designs, the non-Latin characters are often distinctly different from each other and also from the multilingual versions of Helvetica (e.g., Neue Helvetica World). An obvious example would be the Thai characters of Neue Helvetica World compared to Nimbus Sans Thai, the former of which are loopless while the latter are looped. Greek characters also tend to differ.

Arial and MS Sans Serif

thumb|Comparison of Helvetica, [[Arial and Microsoft Sans Serif. Bitstream Vera, a humanist design not based on Helvetica, is shown for comparison.]]

Arial, created for IBM by Monotype and also used by Microsoft, is often described as a Helvetica clone, notably by Matthew Carter who was a consultant for IBM during its design process. although a number of differences exist:

Helvetica's strokes are typically cut either horizontally or vertically. This is especially visible in the t, r, f, and C. Arial employs slanted stroke cuts, following Monotype Grotesque.
Helvetica's G has a spur at bottom right; Arial does not, but instead has a vertical stroke connecting the curved portion to the crossbar.
The tail of Helvetica's R is more upright whereas Arial's R is more diagonal.
The number 1 of Helvetica has a square angle underneath the upper spur, Arial has a curve.
The Q glyph in Helvetica has a straight cross mark, while the cross mark in Arial has a slight curve.

Importantly, Arial is metrically identical to the PostScript version of Helvetica, so that a document designed in Helvetica could be displayed and printed correctly without IBM having to pay Linotype for a Helvetica licence on its printers.

Microsoft's "Helv" design, later known as "MS Sans Serif", is a sans-serif typeface that shares many key characteristics with Helvetica, including the horizontally and vertically aligned stroke terminators and more uniform stroke widths within a glyph.

Derivative designs

Some fonts based on Helvetica are intended for different purposes and have clearly different designs. Digital-period font designer Ray Larabie has commented that in the 1970s "everyone was modifying Helvetica with funky curls, mixed-case and effects". Indeed, in one 1973 competition to design new fonts, three of the 20 winners were decorative designs inspired by Helvetica.