Stempel AG – a German firm that worked in partnership with the Lynotype Company – to redesign and develop the family of fonts. In 1960, Parker decided to adopt Neue Haas Grotesk, and asked Arthur Ritzel, a designer from D. Parker was given the task of expanding the font library owned by the company, and between 19 he managed to add almost 1,000, in many cases adapting pre-existing fonts to suit the technical demands of the Linotype machines. In 1959, Mike Parker was appointed director of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, an American firm that sold Linotype typewriters, the first machines to automatically assemble rows of characters. Mike Parker, the man who changed Helevetica’s fate Technically speaking, Neue Haas Grotesk had several interesting features: the negative (white) space surrounding the letters and the lines comprising the font were perfectly balanced, and the strokes were always horizontal or vertical, and never diagonal, creating a visual effect that was simultaneously bold and neutral. Eduard Hoffmann’s notes documenting the creation of the font Neue Haas Grotesk. It was a sans serif font with a linear, simple and elegant design, and this no-frills look meant it was extremely legible. In 1957, Miedinger came up with a new set of characters, which he named Neue Haas Grotesk. His aim was to counter the success of Akzidenz Grotesk, the typeface launched by their competitors, the H. In this article we will start by looking at its invention way back in 1957, before going through the various milestones and restyles that have seen it become many international brands’ go-to typeface.Īs its name suggests (based on ‘Helvetia’, the Latin word for ‘Switzerland’), Helvetica was created in Switzerland, when Eduard Hoffmann, director of the Haus foundry in Münchenstein, decided to commission freelance designer Max Alfons Miedinger to create a new font.

But to what does it owe its success and its widespread usage, and how has it changed over the years?

Love it or hate it, Helvetica is one of the world’s most commonly used fonts, both in advertising and publishing and in urban signage.

Helvetica: the story of a font adored by brands

Switzerland extra bold font