Combining all the best aspects of its history, Helvetica Now is bringing back the grace and finesse of vintage Helvetica that Helvetica Neue had to sacrifice in order to work with early personal computers and desktop printers.” “Today, brands need type that will cope with every manner of high-res device, laptop screens, e-ink, as well as 200-foot-tall digital prints That’s what Helvetica Now solves, consisting of three distinct optical sizes - Micro, Text and Display. “The reveal of Helvetica Now comes 30 years since the introduction of Helvetica Neue,” says a press release from Monotype. Nix is the narrator of a promo video highlighting the ubiquity of Helvetica, which he characterizes as “like water,” and “the gold-standard” of fonts.
Why helvetica now update#
“We jokingly refer to it as Helvetica Stockholm Syndrome,” says Nix, quoted in an article in Wired magazine, speaking on the corporation’s decision to update and relaunch this one-venerated font-for-the-ages, released this week as Helvetica Now.
As a result, older versions of the font were lacking in some important areas,” said Charles Nix, type director at Monotype, in the Helvetica Now press release. Previous versions of the typeface weren’t designed to be used in graphic applications that have developed over the last 30 years. “Today, we’re asking Helvetica to do more than it ever has before. Director Charles Nix noticed major brands jumping ship on Helvetica, including Google, Apple, and IBM-with all the tech companies developing in-house versions that appeared visually similar, but eschewed some of Helvetica’s longstanding design quirks, like irregular kerning, compression at small sizes, and odd punctuation. The licensing rights are currently owned by Monotype, the world’s largest type company.
In 2007, it was the subject of a feature-length documentary and a 50-year retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which purchased a complete set of the original lead type for the collection in honor of the occasion.īut now, just a decade later, Helvetica has become outré. In 1988, it received a subtle facelift and was reintroduced as Helvetica Neue. It was the invention of Swiss designers Max Miedinger and Edouard Hoffman and soon became the san-serif hallmark of clean, readable style and mid-century modern simplicity, going on to carry the message of thousands of corporate brands, including American Airlines, the MTA of New York City, and American Apparel. When classic Swedish simplicity meets the never-ending demand for something newer than Neue.īut the face of type was thought to be permanently changed for the better in 1957, with the introduction of Helvetica to the font market.
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