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| Typeface | Helvetica |
|---|---|
| Category | Sans-serif |
| Classifications | Grotesque sans-serif |
| Designer(s) | Max Miedinger |
| Foundry | Haas Typefoundry |
| Date released | 1937 |
| Re-issuing foundries | Mergenthaler Linotype Company |
| Design based on | Akzidenz Grotesk |
| Variations | Helvetica Neue Swiss 721 BT |
Helvetica is the name of a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1937 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger. In Typography, a typeface is a set of one or more Fonts designed with stylistic unity each comprising a coordinated set of Glyphs A typeface usually comprises In Typography, a typeface is a set of one or more Fonts designed with stylistic unity each comprising a coordinated set of Glyphs A typeface usually comprises History Ancient usages Sans-serif letter forms can be found in Latin Etruscan, and Greek inscriptions for as early as 5th century BC History Ancient usages Sans-serif letter forms can be found in Latin Etruscan, and Greek inscriptions for as early as 5th century BC A type designer is a person who designs Typefaces Some type designers are employed by Type foundries, or operate them Max Miedinger (1910-12-24 - 1980-03-08 was a Swiss typeface designer. A type foundry is a Company that designs and/or distributes Typefaces Originally type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces and Year 1937 ( MCMXXXVII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. A type foundry is a Company that designs and/or distributes Typefaces Originally type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces and The Mergenthaler Linotype Company was founded in the United States in 1886 to market the linecaster invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. Akzidenz-Grotesk is a realist Sans-serif Typeface originally released by the H History Ancient usages Sans-serif letter forms can be found in Latin Etruscan, and Greek inscriptions for as early as 5th century BC In Typography, a typeface is a set of one or more Fonts designed with stylistic unity each comprising a coordinated set of Glyphs A typeface usually comprises Year 1937 ( MCMXXXVII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Switzerland (English pronunciation; Schweiz Swiss German: Schwyz or Schwiiz Suisse Svizzera Svizra officially the Swiss Confederation A type designer is a person who designs Typefaces Some type designers are employed by Type foundries, or operate them Max Miedinger (1910-12-24 - 1980-03-08 was a Swiss typeface designer.
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History
Helvetica was created by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas type foundry) of Münchenstein, Switzerland. A type foundry is a Company that designs and/or distributes Typefaces Originally type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces and Münchenstein is a municipality in the district of Arlesheim in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland. Switzerland (English pronunciation; Schweiz Swiss German: Schwyz or Schwiiz Suisse Svizzera Svizra officially the Swiss Confederation Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. Akzidenz-Grotesk is a realist Sans-serif Typeface originally released by the H Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, it was created based on Schelter-Grotesk.
In 1960, the typeface's name was changed by Haas' German parent company Stempel to Helvetica — derived from Confoederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland — in order to make it more marketable internationally. Switzerland (English pronunciation; Schweiz Swiss German: Schwyz or Schwiiz Suisse Svizzera Svizra officially the Swiss Confederation
Variants
Alternative character sets
Helvetica Fractions contains only characters representing numbers, fractions, percentages.
Helvetica Central European contains only characters supporting letters found in Central European languages.
Helvetica Cyrillic contains only just enough characters supporting letters found in Basic Latin, and Cyrillic code pages.
Helvetica Greek contains only just enough characters supporting letters found in Basic Latin, and Greek code pages.
Helvetica World is a family of four fonts published by Linotype in 2002. It contains 1866 glyphs per font, supporting characters from Latin Extended, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, superscripts and subscripts, letterlike symbols, arrows, mathematical symbols, box drawing, block elements, alphabetic presentation forms, Arabic presentation forms. A glyph is an element of writing Two or more glyphs representing the same symbol whether interchangeable or context-dependent are called Allographs the abstract unit they Similar to Arial, Arabic glyphs do not have fixed weight within each glyph. Arial, sometimes marketed as Arial MT, is a Sans-serif Typeface and Computer font packaged with Microsoft Windows, other
Styling variants
Helvetica Inserat is a redrawn version of Helvetica Black Condensed that gives the glyphs a more squared appearance, similar to Impact and Haettenschweiler. Impact is a realist Sans-serif Typeface designed by Geoffrey Lee in 1965 and released by the Stephenson Blake foundry Haettenschweiler is a realist sans-serif typeface based on an uppercase metal-cast type called Schmalfette Grotesk (German for bold condensed sans-serif Strike with strokes in $, ¢ are replaced by non-strikethrough version. 4 is opened at top. Cyrillic characters are supported.
Helvetica Textbook contains monospaced version of the font. Some characters such as 1, 4, 6, 9, I, a, f, q, mu, and ¶ are drawn differently from the proportional space version. The pilcrow (¶ Unicode U+00B6 HTML entity ¶ also called the Paragraph sign or the alinea (
Helvetica Rounded contains rounded stroke terminators.
Neue Helvetica, a reworking of Helvetica with a more structurally unified set of weights and widths, was developed at D. Stempel AG, Linotype's daughter company. The Mergenthaler Linotype Company was founded in the United States in 1886 to market the linecaster invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. The studio manager was Wolfgang Schimpf, his assistant Reinhard Haus. Manager of the project was René Kerfante. Erik Spiekermann was the design consultant and designed the literature for the launch in 1983. Erik Spiekermann (born May 30 1947) is a German typographer and designer Year 1983 ( MCMLXXXIII) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1983 Gregorian calendar) [1] The weight and width program of Helvetica Neue is similar to that of the Univers typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger. Univers (ynivɛʀ French: "universe" is the name of a realist Sans-serif Typeface designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1954 Adrian Frutiger (b 24 May 1928 is one of the prominent typeface designers of the twentieth century who continues influencing the direction of digital typography in the twenty-first Neue Helvetica also comes in Outline, but not Textbook or Rounded fonts.
Similar typefaces
Generic versions of Helvetica have been made by various vendors, including Monotype Imaging (CG Triumvirate), ParaType (Pragmatica), Bitstream (Swiss 721). Bitstream Inc (NASDAQBITS is a Type foundry that produces digital Typefaces (fonts
Monotype's Arial, designed in 1982, while different from Helvetica in some few details, has identical character widths, and is indistinguishable by most non-specialists. Monotype Imaging Inc is a Typesetting and Typeface design company ( Type foundry) responsible for many developments in Printing technology Arial, sometimes marketed as Arial MT, is a Sans-serif Typeface and Computer font packaged with Microsoft Windows, other Year 1982 ( MCMLXXXII) was a Common year starting on Friday (link displays the 1982 Gregorian calendar) The capital letters C, G, and R, as well as the lowercase letters a, e, r, and t, are useful for quickly distinguishing Arial and Helvetica. [2] Differences include:
- Helvetica's strokes are typically cut either horizontally or vertically. This is especially visible in the t, r, and C. Arial employs slanted stroke cuts.
- Helvetica's G has a well-defined spur; Arial does not.
- The tails of the R glyphs and the a glyphs are different.
Nimbus Sans, another similar font family that incorporates fonts designed in 1940 (Nimbus Sans bold condensed, Nimbus Sans bold condensed (D)) and 1946 (Nimbus Sans Black Condensed, Nimbus Sans Black Condensed (D)), is produced by URW. URW is the usual short form of the company URW++ Design & Development, located in Hamburg, Germany. Nimbus Sans L fonts were released under the GNU General Public License.
"Helv", later known as "MS Sans Serif", is a sans-serif font that shares many key characteristics to Helvetica, including the horizontally and vertically-aligned stroke terminators and more uniformed stroke widths within a glyph. MS Sans Serif is a proportional Raster font introduced in Windows 1
Usage
Helvetica is among the most widely used sans-serif typefaces. The New York City Subway is a Rapid transit system owned by the City of New York and leased to the New York City Transit Authority, a subsidiary agency Versions exist for the Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and Greek alphabets. The Cyrillic alphabet (səˈrɪlɪk also called azbuka, from the old name of the first two letters is actually a family of Alphabets, subsets of which are used by The Hebrew alphabet (אָלֶף-בֵּית עִבְרִי alephbet ’ivri) consists of 22 letters used for writing the Hebrew language. The Greek alphabet (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early Unicode character sets include special characters and accents for Hindi, Urdu, Khmer, and Vietnamese. In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's Variants of character-based writing systems, including Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, have been developed to complement Helvetica.
Major companies and products that have used Helvetica in their wordmarks include 3M, American Airlines, American Apparel, the former American Telephone & Telegraph Company, Crate & Barrel, Energizer batteries, Greyhound Lines, ITV, Jeep, Lufthansa, Marks & Spencer, Microsoft, Karlsberger, National Car Rental, Panasonic, Target Corporation and Thames Television. A wordmark subset of the term Logotype ' is a standardized graphic representation of the name of a company institution or product name used for purposes of identification 3M Company ( formerly Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company until 2002 is an American multinational conglomerate corporation with a worldwide American Airlines Inc (AA is a US -based airline and the world's Largest airline in total passenger miles transported and passenger fleet size American Apparel ( is the largest clothing manufacturer in the United States Before proposing a merge request please see Talk and see if the merger you propose has recently been made and Crate & Barrel is a chain of American Retail stores based in Northbrook Illinois, specializing in Housewares, Furniture (indoor Energizer Holdings ( headquartered in St Louis Missouri, is an American manufacturer of multiple consumer products including batteries, where it has a Greyhound Lines is an intercity Common carrier of passengers by Bus serving over 3700 destinations in the United States. Independent Television (generally known as ITV) is a public service network of British commercial television broadcasters set up under the Independent Jeep is an Automobile Marque (and registered trademark of Chrysler. Marks & Spencer Group plc (also M&S, Marks and Sparks, and Marks) is a British Retailer with 843 stores in more than 30 Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational Computer technology Corporation, which rose to dominate the Home computer National Car Rental is a Rental car company based in Tulsa Oklahoma. Target Corporation ( is an American Retailing company that was founded in Minneapolis Minnesota in 1902 Thames Television was a licencee of the British ITV television network covering London and parts of the surrounding counties
Apple, Inc.'s Mac OS X uses Helvetica as its default font for numerous applications, and the interfaces for the iPhone and newer iPods use Helvetica almost exclusively. Apple Inc, ( formerly Apple Computer Inc, is an American Multinational corporation with a focus on designing and manufacturing Consumer electronics Mac OS X (mæk oʊ ɛs tɛn is a line of computer Operating systems developed marketed and sold by Apple Inc, the latest of which is pre-loaded on all currently The iPhone is an internet-connected Multimedia Smartphone designed and marketed by Apple Inc iPod is a popular brand of Portable media players designed and marketed by Apple Inc New York City's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) uses Helvetica for all of its subway signs (though some pre-1968 signs sport the similar Medium Standard, an Akzidenz Grotesk-like sans-serif). The Metropolitan Transportation Authority ( MTA) is a Public benefit corporation responsible for Public transportation in the U Akzidenz-Grotesk is a realist Sans-serif Typeface originally released by the H
Canada's federal government uses Helvetica as its identifying typographic voice, and encourages its use in all federal agencies and websites. The Canadian Government, formally Her Majesty's Government in Canada, is the Federal government of Canada. [3] Helvetica is also used in the USA television rating system (TV-G, TV-Y, TV-Y7, etc. )
The video game Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty and its sequels use the font for its main logo. (commonly abbreviated as MGS2) is a stealth action Video game directed by Hideo Kojima, developed by Konami Computer Entertainment As of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns Of The Patriots, the logo was replaced by an entirely different design. (commonly abbreviated to MGS4) is a stealth action Video game.
Helvetica is widely used by the U. NASA 's Space Shuttle, officially called the Space Transportation System ( STS) is the Spacecraft currently used by the United States S. government; for example, federal income tax forms are set in Helvetica, and the NASA space agency uses the type on the Space Shuttle Orbiter. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA, ˈnæsə is an agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's public space program The Space Shuttle orbiters are the orbital Spacecraft of the Space Shuttle program operated by NASA, the space agency of the United States. [4]
Media coverage
In 2007, Linotype GmbH held Helvetica NOW Poster Contest to celebrate 50th anniversary of the font. [5][6] Winners were announced in January 2008 issue of the LinoLetter.
In 2007, director Gary Hustwit released a documentary, Helvetica, to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the typeface. Helvetica is an independent feature-length Documentary film about Typography and Graphic design, centred around the typeface of the same In the film, graphic designer Wim Crouwel said, "Helvetica was a real step from the 19th century typeface. Wim Crouwel, born in 1928 in Groningen, Netherlands, is a Dutch Graphic designer and typographer. The 19th century of the Common Era began on January 1, 1801 and ended on December 31, 1900, according to the Gregorian calendar . . . 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. "
From April 2007 to March 2008, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City displayed an exhibit called "50 Years of Helvetica",[7] which celebrated the many usages of the font. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, USA, on 53rd Street between Fifth The City of New York
References
- ^ "Who Made Helvetica Neue?", typophile. com
- ^ How to Spot Arial at Mark Simonson Studio
- ^ FIP Information Design. Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.
- ^ (2007-09-12). Year 2007 ( MMVII) was a Common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar in the 21st century. Events 1213 - Albigensian Crusade: Simon de Montfort 5th Earl of Leicester, defeats Peter II of Aragon at the Helvetica [Documentary]. Helvetica is an independent feature-length Documentary film about Typography and Graphic design, centred around the typeface of the same Documentary film is a broad category of visual expression that is based on the attempt in one fashion or another to " Document " reality
- ^ Linotype Announces Helvetica NOW Poster Contest
- ^ Helvetica NOW Poster Contest
- ^ http://12.172.4.131/exhibitions/exhibitions.php?id=4506
External links
- Typowiki: Helvetica
- linotype.com: Helvetica Typeface Family overview & related Information
- Helvetica: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit
- Arial vs Helvetica
- MoMA Exhibition (2007), 50 Years of Helvetica
- Helvetica at 50 — BBC News article
- The Helvetica Hegemony: How an unassuming font took over the world — article in Slate, published May 25, 2007
- Helvetica: The little typeface that leaves a big mark — Herald Tribune article on the 50 years of Helvetica
- Photo of Helvetica wallpaper
- fontshop.com: Alternatives to Helvetica
- Helvetica at the Internet Movie Database, a documentary film about the making, use, and history of the Helvetica font
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