Monotype launches the first redesign of Helvetica in 35 years
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In my view, Univers evokes a deep feeling of sophistication unlike any other font. Helvetica has the “grunge” and New York aesthetic after it took over the graphic design scene in the 70’s and 80’s whereas Univers was silently used in engineering manuals, control panels, branding, keyboards(Apple), movie credits [2] and UI without much fuss. It never became cool and edgy as Helvetica, never tried to be something it is not and doesn't have a following. I was lucky enough to visit the archives [3] in a obscure drawer at the Museum fur Gestaltung in Zurich, seeing the original manuscripts of Univers was an extraordinary feeling. Created in 1950, it is truly timeless and sits along with other giants of contemporary typefaces such as Futura and Eurostile, perhaps in the back row towards the corner.
Univers was, is and always will be.
It’s my favorite font.
[1] https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/univers-next/
[2] https://www.dafont.com/forum/read/5633/what-s-the-font-for-m...
Honestly, it's right there in the names. Helvetica projects a very Swiss Modern feel to it. Sometimes that's what you want, sometimes it's not. Univers is the most neutral typeface around that's got any personality at all. (I've always felt Haas Unica and many of the modern sans faces, especially the "brand" ones, have so little character to them that they're just completely bland and uninteresting.) Univers just... is. It's Frutiger's best design, and that's saying something.
Other favorites of mine include Trade Gothic (& friends) and Futura. I'm a huge fan of the 1930s-1970s "industrial" look, like you might find stamped on motor nameplates for heavy machinery, or the Apollo cockpits, or the IBM 360 consoles. These designs just scream _solid_ in a way that modern stuff... doesn't. (Maybe because it isn't.)
(Tangent to a tangent: does anyone know what typeface HP used on their equipment in the '70s through '90s? It's a very close cousin to Univers, but not identical. Maybe something internal only? I don't think it's just an odd cut of any of the usual suspects either. This is another typeface that has always connoted reliability and stuff that Just Works to me.)
Still, though, like you, I'd say Univers is my favorite more days than not. If I had to pick only one typeface, it'd be the one (more days than not)... just don't make me do that :)
Microgramma really hits the spot for a certain kind of 60s/70s retro-futurism.
The Gorton typefaces were part of the MASTER COPY type templates[2][3] produced by George Gorton Machine Co. for its Pantograph engraving machines, and were commonly used for civilian and military aircraft panels produced from at least the late 40s onwards, possibly earlier (the linked catalog is from 1947). Since many of those contractors were heavily involved in Mercury and later Apollo, it makes sense that they used the same engraving machines and type. IBM also used Gorton when it started producing double shot keycaps for its keyboards in the 70s. There's also a modified version, Gorton Modified, that was created by Signature Plastics for keycaps that's still used today for SA profile caps.
Unfortunately, the Gorton plotter fonts have never been revived for digital use despite their interesting history.
0. https://msis.jsc.nasa.gov/sections/section09.htm#_9.5_LABELI...
1. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/197100...
I'm partial to Futura and Gill Sans when it comes to sans-serif fonts. For display stuff, that is. Akzidenz-Grotesk is a pretty good text sans-serif.
Very nice indeed, very “German”. I can see how an engineer would find this font lovely.
Open Sans is a poor replacement. I quite like Source Sans Pro but it isn't the same as Helvetica
https://public-sans.digital.gov/
Not quite as grotesque as Helvetica too.
You may also consider FreeSans (GNU replacement for Helvetica) and Liberation Sans (which is a metric replacement for Arial, which is an alternative for Helvetica...)
Also, what's wrong with Open Sans?
Most Linux systems come with the Nimbus fonts as part of the printer drivers, and Nimbus Sans is very close, but apparently (AFAIK) only has a limited character set unless you pay for the full version. GNU FreeFont is practically the same as Helvetica and Nimbus but gives you a much larger character set for free.
Liberation is not quite as geometric as Helvetica/FreeFont/Nimbus.
Here's a comparison of a few fonts (the first is San Francisco by Apple).
https://i.imgur.com/SwxydqB.png
The 'r' and 't' in Liberation look quite a bit different than the first three, which are basically Helevetica clones. The ring in the 'b' also has a weird lower-left side. It's like 20% of the way to being a Serif font.
I haven't used MS fonts in a while but DejaVu reminds me very much of Arial, and to me it looks a lot worse. Especially the way the 'S' looks is quite awkward.
The official website has better representations, but is still full of a load of flashy animations and videos before you get to the actual font https://www.monotype.com/fonts/helvetica-now
In a lot of ways it really looks like someone took the core ideologies of modern third-places and distilled them into a visual type system, which maybe says something about the privatization of formerly public spaces and infrastructure over the past 50+ years.
If you look at the new typeface it's clearly designed primarily for the needs of consumer products and advertising. They could have instead created a typeface that was purposely designed to look bad on consumer products and in advertising, but that's not the direction they went in. That's not an accident, it was a deliberate design decision.
Whereas the goal of the original typeface was to create a better society, the goal of the new one is basically to make it onto a Starbucks cup. It's not even a subtle difference, even though it's supposedly just an updated typeface the two are really night and day.
Hmm, I think that a typeface is possibly the least effective way to make a political statement. Approximately zero people looking at it will impute a political message.
But there's a definite cultural meaning to certain fonts; what springs to mind is Impact (memes), comic sans (trolling / badly designed websites / your aunt's emails), and "gothic" fonts (nazis) (https://www.dafont.com/mtheme.php?id=4). I can imagine that font designers can take these fonts and their cultural associations and craft something new that evokes these.
Think of written Russian. Did you think of beautiful cursive Cyrillic as Pushkin would've written or some blocky reverse-R all caps propaganda text?
Wonder why literally everybody associates anything written in "German Gothic” (blackletter, actually, but I digress) is instantly associated with a guy with a Chaplin moustache but who isn't Chaplin?
Why Simplified Chinese was designed to look good with printed serifs which interfered with the Traditional script's typography?
And I'm not even a graphic designer or a “font nerd”...
So these old German typefaces are not inherently political and were only half a decade later adopted by neo nazis who have no deeper knowledge of it’s history. Or you could say, the extreme wish the Nazis had to look modern, got replaced by a wish to go back to a wrongly imagined past (which happens quite often on the extreme political fringes)
...
Font licensing is immoral rent seeking that takes advantage of a legal loophole and goes against the spirit of the law in major countries (typefaces are ineligible for copyright in at least the US and Japan), and I'm always disheartened by how many individual designers and companies have fallen for it.
> Typefaces cannot be protected by copyright in the United States (Code of Federal Regulations, Ch 37, Sec. 202.1(e); Eltra Corp. vs. Ringer). The idea that typefaces (rather than fonts, which are computer software) cannot be copyrighted in the United States is black letter law. 37 C.F.R. § 202.1(e). Under U.S. law, typefaces and their letter forms or glyphs are considered utilitarian objects whose public utility outweighs any private interest in protecting their creative elements. However, there is a distinction between a font and a typeface. The machine code used to display a stylized typeface (called a font) is protectable as copyright. In 1992, the US Copyright Office determined that digital outline fonts had elements that could be protected as software. Since that time, the Office has accepted registration of copyright for digital vector fonts, such as PostScript Type 1, TrueType, and OpenType format files.
TL;DR
"On a computer, a typeface isn't a typeface so you have to pay us for it"
c.f. Apple and rounded corners, Mickey Mouse...
Does that stop any counterfeit? You get it close enough, get the content visible and tank the price, and the name doesn’t stop squat.
And ofc naturally counterfeit markets spring up, where consumers go specifically with intent to purchase the fake (at severe discount), completely sidestepping the naming/marketing issue
Also, font companies are big and can threaten legal action, and even the threat of legal action can put people off, even if US law makes the font letter-shapes themselves not copyrightable.
A font file is more akin to a photograph than to the environment of which the photo is taken, so it's not clear why the morality of licensing photos and fonts would apply any differently.
See Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. Sorry in advance if I misunderstood your point
In other words, a font is the specific representation of the concept, idea and qualities that define a typeface, as a photo is a representation of the qualities of its subject.
At the moment, I'm basically required to include traffic trackers for many of the best fonts.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: no, you guys are right, I totally didn't get the joke.
Edit: oh, I misunderstood! Apple might start using it, but they are not compelled to. A lot of other fonts such as Palatino have also been updated, but Apple doesn’t include them (yet).
Truly the most amusing thing about the new typefaces are the alternate forms of certain iconic letters. The alternate forms are more classically resemble the legendary Akzidenz-Grotesk, in the tradition of paring back the few flourishes that Helvetica did have.
Ironically some of the alternate forms also make it resemble Arial, Monotype's famous metric-identical Helvetica clone, despite Monotype's long insistence that Arial is less grotesk and more humanist. But I also found the not-sure-if-serious dissing of Arial to be mostly signalling and snobbery. Other alternate forms seem a bit odd, as if someone was playing 'design your own sans-serif typeface' and filled out the missing cells of a big row-column table for completion, like here's a geometric 't', and a humanist 'l'.
But all that aside, the new typefaces look nice and are redrawn with purpose. The micro variant actually makes Helvetica usable at small sizes for the first time. It's a well-crafted family in the honor of a classic.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/9/18302057/helvetica-now-new... [2] https://www.creativeboom.com/resources/monotype-launches-the...
My dad was a typesetter and prepress technician for years. His favourite font was helvetica. I sent him this link. Here are his comments:
>They fucked with "R" the only way too tell them abart, and they gave it a streight leg.
>They messed with the dots wich was the othe way you could tell.