Helvetica

Someone had to do it.
The typeface Helvetica is one of the most widely used and influential sans serif typefaces in the world. Some consider Max Miedinger, the creator of Helvetica to be God. Some people have physically tattooed the word onto their skin to show their eternal love and vast appreciation for the typeface. However it does comes with some extreme baggage. According to the website helveticasux.com “our environment is over-saturated with the use of Helvetica. Some have even suggested that Helvetica is a complete design cop-out” – Dirk+Weiss. “Most people who use Helvetica, use it because it’s ubiquitous. It’s like going to McDonald’s instead of thinking about food. Because it’s there, it’s on every street corner, so let’s eat crap because it’s on the corner.” – Erik Spiekermann.

Nevertheless Max Miedinger changed the world of design forever. In 1957 in Switzerland he and Eduard Hoffmann set out to design a new sans serif font to compete with the Swiss typography at the time. They aimed to create a typeface, which had no fundamental meaning, was entirely neutral, simple and could be applied anywhere and everywhere. It was originally known as Neue Haas Grotesk, with its design based on Schelter Grotesk and Haas’ Normal Grotesk yet was changed in 1960 to Helvetica in attempt to make it more marketable worldwide. The word Helvetica is Latin for Swiss and Helvetia is Latin for Switzerland. Hoffmann decided it would be inappropriate to name a typeface after a country and therefore went with Helvetica.

In general, the anatomy of the standard typeface Helvetica is significantly consistent. However it differs throughout the many variations of the typeface; Helvetica Std, Helvetica Light, Helvetica Light Oblique, Helvetica Neue Ultra Light, Helvetica Neue Thin, Helvetica Neue Light, Helvetica Neue Roman, Helvetica Neue Medium, Helvetica Neue Bold, Helvetica Neue Heavy and Helvetica Neue Black. One example is Helvetica Neue Light. It’s letter form is influenced by the stem stroke weight and the proportiante height of the letter is determined by the size of the cross bar (if any) and of the letterform based on specific units of measurements.

Helvetica is taking over the world. It is internationally used amongst some of the world’s most successful advertising campaigns within companies such as Apple, American Airlines, BMW, Target, Panasonic, Coca Cola, and even Microsoft. It is also used by the American Government and NASA. Furthermore Helvetica is the primary typeface of many major transport systems. The question is, where has Helvetica not been applied in today's world.

There are not many typefaces that hold international designer in-house jokes and comical proclamations such as “I’m gonna get a tattoo that says Helvetica written in Arial. When a woman corrects me on it, I’ll marry her.” Furthermore the popular iPhone application where you are challenged under time to tell the difference between Helvetica and Arial.




Sources: http://www.davidglensmith.com/ai/gd326/images/strokeweights.pdf http://helveticasux.com/ http://www.fontshop.com/education/pdf/helvetica.pdf