The family includes the fonts from the older Neue Helvetica counterparts, except Neue Helvetica 75 Bold Outline. Only OpenType CFF font format was released. It is a version with Latin Extended, Greek, Cyrillic scripts support. Neue Helvetica also comes in variants for Central European and Cyrillic text. Linotype distributes Neue Helvetica on CD. The font family is made up of 51 fonts including 9 weights in 3 widths (8, 9, 8 in normal, condensed, extended widths respectively), and an outline font based on Helvetica 75 Bold Outline (no Textbook or rounded fonts are available). Neue Helvetica uses a numerical design classification scheme, like Univers. Other changes include improved legibility, heavier punctuation marks, and increased spacing in the numbers. Erik Spiekermann was the design consultant and designed the literature for the launch in 1983. The studio manager was Wolfgang Schimpf, and his assistant was Reinhard Haus the manager of the project was René Kerfante. Neue Helvetica is a reworking of the typeface with a more structurally unified set of heights and widths. However, in Linotype's OpenType version of Helvetica Narrow, the distortions found in the Adobe fonts are non-existent. OpenType version was not produced by Adobe under the distortion reasoning, and recommended Helvetica Condensed instead. The font was developed when printer ROM space was very scarce, so it was created by mathematically squashing Helvetica by 18% (to 82% of the original width), resulting in distorted letterforms and thin vertical strokes next to thicker horizontals. However, the width is scaled in a way that is optically consistent with the widest width fonts. Helvetica Narrow is a version where its width is between Helvetica Compressed and Helvetica Condensed.
Only bold, bold oblique, black, black oblique, bold condensed, bold outline fonts were made, with outline font not issued in digital form by Linotype. Helvetica Rounded is a version containing rounded stroke terminators. Strike with strokes in $, ¢ are replaced by non-strikethrough version. Sharing similar metric as Helvetica Black Condensed, the design gives the glyphs a more squared appearance, similar to Impact and Haettenschweiler. Helvetica Inserat is a version designed in 1957 primarily for use in the advertising industry. Some characters such as 1, 4, 6, 9, I, J, a, f, j, q, u, μ, and ¶ are drawn differently from the original version. Helvetica Textbook is an alternate design of the typeface.
The family consists of Helvetica Compressed, Helvetica Extra Compressed, Helvetica Ultra Compressed fonts. It shares some design elements with Helvetica Inserat, but using curved tail in Q, downward pointing branch in r, and tilde bottom £. Helvetica Compressedĭesigned by Matthew Carter, they are narrow variants that are tighter than the Helvetica Condensed. Helvetica Light was designed by Stempel's artistic director Erich Schultz-Anker, in conjunction with Arthur Ritzel. He then decided on 'Helvetica' as this meant 'Swiss' as opposed to 'Switzerland'. This was ignored by Eduard Hoffmann as he decided it wouldn't be appropriate to name a type after a country. It was initially suggested that the type be called 'Helvetia' which is the original Latin name for Switzerland. In 1960, the typeface's name was changed by Haas' German parent company Stempel to Helvetica (derived from Confoederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland) in order to make it more marketable internationally. After the success of Univers, Arthur Ritzel of Stempel redesigned Neue Haas Grotesk into a larger family.
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When Linotype adopted Neue Haas Grotesk (which was never planned to be a full range of mechanical and hot-metal typefaces) its design was reworked. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, its design was based on Schelter-Grotesk and Haas’ Normal Grotesk. Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with the successful Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market.
Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas type foundry) of Münchenstein, Switzerland. Upper case: dropped horizontal element on A. Lower case: square dot over the letter i.