Helvetica

Helvetica (also known as Neue Haas Grotesk, Helvetica, and later expanded to Neue Helvetica) is a typeface family developed by Max Miedinger together with Edouard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas'sche Schriftgießerei (also known as "Haas") type foundry in Basel, Switzerland. Its design is based on an earlier typeface called Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk dating from 1896. The typeface, originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, is simple in style and sans serif or sans serif (Vox Classification: Linear B Neo-Grotesque). It became immensely popular in the late 1960s and through the 1970s, due to its enormous influence within the so-called "International Typographic Style" (particularly in corporate identities), one of the most important modernist currents of the XX century.

Historical framework

Helvetica

In 1957 Max Miedinger received a commission from Edouard Hoffmann (Haas Foundry) to modernize the style of the sans-serif type of this typographic house. The type was Haas Grotesk and was based on the Akzidenz Grotesk of the Berthold Foundry from the late 19th century. Miedinger redesigned the typeface, turning it into the "Neue Haas Grotesk".

From 1957 to 1961 the type retained the Miedinger design name, but at the time the Stempel Foundry acquired the Haas Foundry (along with the rights to the original designs), the new owners (particularly Walter Cunz) decided to develop a complete series with different weights, and to rename it "helvetica" (Latin for "Swiss", adjective). The Stempel Foundry launched it commercially for Linotype machines, and in a short time, aided by its new name and a boom in the export of the target design (initially Swiss, later known as the International Typographic Style), Helvetica is positioned among the most used typefaces in history.

Helvetica is an effective typeface for everyday use, especially for headlines (not much less for body text). Its success is due to its stupendous scalability in all kinds of situations, as well as the profusion with which it was used during the period in which the international style trend set the tone for graphics (during the 1950s and 1960s).

The adaptation of non-Latin typefaces to the Helvetica aesthetic and the wide range of specific language for letters and accents made Helvetica the most famous corporate typeface of the 1960s and 1970s.

The great leap that technological development has taken and the introduction by Apple Inc. of the first personal computer with a graphical interface in 1984 revolutionized the world of design: accessibility to design tools is democratized and for the year 1986 Adobe had released a font collection containing over a thousand typefaces, including Helvetica Neue.

Features

Kerning/Kerning

Helvetica is a typeface that, even after more than 40 years of use and development, continues to present serious problems in its kerning table. It is recommended that its use at appreciable sizes (headlines, logos, etc.) is not done using automatic kerning, but rather a manual one (accommodating the sequence of characters letter by letter, preserving optical fluidity).

Rationale

Helvetica (and almost all neolinear families, particularly the "Grotesk" and the geometric ones) do not behave well in justified alignment, generating the well-known "rivers" (the accumulation of spaces in the vertical movement, from line to line) that fragment the typographic color of the text. ^{[citation required]}

Readability

Although several experts maintain a neutral position on the question of readability of Helvetica, placing it in the middle of the scale between humanistic types and ultrageometric types, we cannot fail to criticize the aspect of its readability. At small sizes, the typography behaves defectively, optically fragmenting the reading axes. Several great designers have championed Helvetica for headline and large-size use only (including Wolfgang Weingart and Paul Rand). ^{[citation required]}

Space

Helvetica (like many neolinears) needs extra amounts of leading and wide margins in its usage. Weights 25 to 45 perform relatively better than weights 55 and up.

Typographic combination with types with serifs

Pairing Helvetica with a serif typeface can be problematic structurally, Helvetica is close to the Clarendon typefaces of the 19th century. However, almost no one uses this combination. The other combinations present on the market generally do not take into account the optical aspects, nor the architectural similarities of the letters, much less historical aspects. This makes Helvetica a much lonelier font than it seems.

Helvetica and Arial

Comparison between Helvetic and Arial (overlays). Arial (white) Helvetic (red)

One of the most active themes in the typographic world is the tension between Helvetica, as the manifesto typeface of the modernist movement, and Arial, an omnipresent typeface today on personal computers around the world.

Arial is a clone of Helvetica made in 1990 by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders of the Monotype Foundation (apparently the design was based on a predecessor called Monotype Grotesque 215). Microsoft began in the first half of the 1990s to include Arial in a basic TrueType font package for the Internet and in the Microsoft Office suite, hence its current penetration.

Arial and Helvetic in blue and red