The Helvetica™ (Latin for Swiss) has the objective and functional style which was associated with Swiss typography in the 1950s and 1960s. The font is perfect for international correspondence: no ornament, no emotion, just clear presentation of information. Helvetica™ font is still one of most popular sans-serif fonts.
Helvetica™, the typeface par excellence, can look back on a colorful life. Originally designed for hand composition, it has been adapted over the years for all methods of
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Font Designer: Linotype Design Studio, 1961
About the Font
Developed and continuously refined by the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei AG and then D. Stempel AG, both fully owned subsidiaries of Linotype. The key design concepts were drawn by Max Miedinger in 1957.
Apple and Adobe later obtained the licenses from Linotype for the Neue Helvetica® font, which is still one of the most popular typefaces worldwide.
The font Helvetica® (Latin for Swiss) has the objective and functional
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Helvetica™ – still the most popular sans-serif font.
Get the original from Linotype as single fonts, in a Value Pack, or on CD.
Unbeatable price! Purchase all 36 Helvetica weights in one package, available now for instant download.
Need individual Helvetica weights? No problem! Single font weights from the Helvetica typeface are available for instant download. From .
Neue Helvetica: the official update and extension of
[...]Max Miedinger – born 24.12.1910 in Zurich, Switzerland, died 8.3.1980 in Zurich, Switzerland – type designer.
1926-30: trains as a typesetter in Zurich, after which he attends evening classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich. 1936-46: typographer for Globus department store’s advertising studio in Zurich. 1947-56: customer counselor and typeface sales representative for the Haas’sche Schriftgießerei in Münchenstein near Basle. From 1956 onwards: freelance graphic artist in
[...]Linotype previously had three design studios located around the globe:
Mergenthaler Linotype, in the United States, was founded in Brooklyn, but later moved to Melville, NY, and then to Hauppauge, NY. Mergenthaler Linotype's design studio employed at varying times up to 80 designers under the direction of Chauncey H. Griffith, Jackson Burke, Mike Parker, and Matthew Carter.
In continental Europe, Linotype typefaces were produced by the D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt, Germany.
[...]This typeface, designed by Max Miedinger and other project members at the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei, has become one of the most famous and popular typefaces in the world, thanks to the marketing strategy of Stempel and Linotype. It forms an integral part of many printers and operating systems. The original letterforms of Helvetica™ had to be modified for the Linotype system. Over the years, Helvetica™ was expanded to include many different weights, but these were not coordinated with each
[...]Find further Font Features in our Font Feature Archive.
Typographic Tip of the Month from Linotype’s Type Director Akira Kobayashi!
May 2008: Understand Adrian Frutiger’s methodology!
“Typography must be as beautiful as a forest, not like the concrete jungle of the tenements ... It gives distance between the trees, the room to breathe and allow for life.” – Adrian Frutiger (Interview with Klaus-Peter Nicolay, Druckmarkt, issue 2004 9/10).
I have worked
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Font Designer: Linotype Design Studio, 1983. The key design concepts were drawn by Max Miedinger in 1957.
About the Font
Originally designed in 1957 for hand compostion, Helvetica® font has been adapted over the years for all methods of composition, from hot metal line composition and opto-mechanical photosetting of the first generation to digital typesetters.
The new possibilities offered by CRT and Laser technologies have caused us to have the complete Helvetica™ font family
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Helvetica is one of the most famous and popular typefaces in the world. It lends an air of lucid efficiency to any typographic message with its clean, no-nonsense shapes. The original typeface was called Neue Haas Grotesk, and was designed in 1957 by Max Miedinger for the Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) in Switzerland. In 1960 the name was changed to Helvetica (an adaptation of "Helvetia", the Latin name for Switzerland).
Over the years, the Helvetica family was expanded to include many different weights, but these were not as well coordinated with each other as they might have been. In 1983, D. Stempel AG and Linotype re-designed and digitized Neue Helvetica and updated it into a cohesive font family. At the beginning of the 21st Century, Linotype again released an updated design of Helvetica, the Helvetica World typeface family. This family is much smaller in terms of its number of fonts, but each font makes up for this in terms of language support. Helvetica World supports a number of languages and writing systems from all over the globe.
Today, the original Helvetica family consists of 34 different font weights. 20 weights are available in Central European versions, supporting the languages of Central and Eastern Europe. 20 weights are also available in Cyrillic versions, and four are available in Greek versions.
Many customers ask us what good non-Latin typefaces can be mixed with Helvetica. Fortunately, Helvetica already has Greek and Cyrillic versions, and Helvetica World includes a specially-designed Hebrew Helvetica in its OpenType character set. But Linotype also offers a number of CJK fonts that can be matched with Helvetica.
Chinese fonts that pair well with Helvetica:DF Hei (Simplified Chinese)
DF Hei (Traditional Chinese)
DF Li Hei (Traditional Chinese)
DFP Hei (Simplified Chinese)
Japanese fonts that pair well with Helvetica:DF Gothic
DF Gothic P
DFHS Gothic
Korean fonts that pair well with Helvetica:DFK Gothic
