Dubbed ‘the world’s most popular font’, Helvetica is a typeface we come across everyday. It goes unnoticed most of the time, and that is one of its unique selling points. Its designer, Max Miedinger, wanted to create a typeface that lacked personality so it communicates messages efficiently. Designed in 1957, he called this new typeface Neue Hass Grotesk. In 1960 the name was changed to Helvetica; which is an adaptation of Helvetia, being the Latin name for Switzerland.
Its familiarity is unsurprising. If you’re an avid social media follower, you read text in this typeface on the user interface for Facebook and Instagram. From a branding perspective, it is one of the most widely used sans serif typefaces and has been a popular choice for corporate logos, including those for 3M, American Airlines, American Apparel, BMW, Jeep, Lufthansa, Microsoft, Mitsubishi Electric, Orange, Target, Toyota, Panasonic, Motorola, Kawasaki and Verizon Wireless. Apple has incorporated Helvetica in the iOS® platform and the iPod® device. It is also famously (and I daresay, beautifully) used on all New York subway signage.
Helvetica is an ever-evolving typeface, with its foundry releasing new versions up until recently. Helvetica Now was designed and developed recently after the original Helvetica was hard to reproduce on small screens such as those of the Apple Watch. The creators of Helvetica Now, Monotype, have called their redesign a ‘restoration’ rather than a revival — adapting a classic font to the needs of consumers today.
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