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Knoweldge of the history of type enriches its use

By Darek Johnson

Remember Helvetica – the ’70s most popular font? Then, graphic designers included Helvetica – more than 86 true versions are offered -- on almost everything printed, except, perhaps, Lone Star beer bottles. Remarkably, Helvetica is more than 50 years old, but it’s far from forgotten. 3M, Agfa, American Airlines, BMW, Caterpillar, Harley-Davidson, Jeep, JCPenney, Lufthansa, Microsoft, Mitsubishi Electric, Target, The North Face, Toyota, Panasonic, Motorola, Kawasaki, Verizon Wireless and many other companies use Helvetica-based logos.
Germany’s early 20th century Bauhaus design movement influenced Helvetica (in Latin, the name means “Swiss”) which was created as a neutral type, one that wouldn’t visually convey emotion or meaning. I’m not sure the neutrality persists, because, today, the font is commonly applied to corporate imaging. Generally, to designers and design salespeople, it symbolizes modernity, boldness, clarity and strength. This present-day, almost-compulsory classification demonstrates that widely-distributed imagery, just like common product names (Kleenex, Xerox), often becomes a collective form.
As owl images symbolize wisdom, and elephant icons represent strength, popular fonts can (also) acquire a universal significance.
The Bauhaus design movement was a school of art, architecture and design that incorporated no-nonsense materials and economic thoughtfulness. In the ’20s, Bauhaus designers believed in that day’s technology and urban lifestyles.
The Bauhaus school, conceived in1919 by Walter Gropius, until 1933 had technology and economic assets that influenced modern design. Not surprisingly, its unadorned, practical style clashed with the then-popular styles, fashion and popular Gothic-based architecture, which is best illustrated by Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral.
Remember, also, the art-nouveau and art-deco schools co-existed, but also clashed with Bauhaus
design principles. And, although Frank Lloyd Wright denied any association with the Bauhaus group, his architectural practicality reflects some influence.
Equally interesting, perhaps, is that Tel Aviv, because of its more than 4,000 Bauhaus buildings, was declared a UNESCO, World Cultural Heritage site in 2003.
The Bauhaus blood bond to modern design also reinforces Helvetica’s misplaced, design-neutrality status. For example, the very contemporary, Society for Environmental Graphic Design (SEGD) magazine’s masthead -- segdDESIGN – is set in Helvetica Bold.
SEGD boasts more than 1,600 members who “…work in planning, design, fabrication, and implementation of communications in the built environment.” Member’s projects include the 125-ft.-high, American Eagle Outfitter’s Times Square spectacular (see ST, January 2010, page 58) designed by Baltimore’s Barnycz Group. The American Eagle logo font is FF DIN, and I’ll have more on it in a minute.
Barnycz also designed the Crown Fountain at Chicago’s Millennium Park.
Sans-serif Futura was the Bauhaus designer’s chosen font, although, originally, the font was so disliked it was called “grotesque.” Again, it conflicted with the status quo, but represented the core of Bauhaus ideology: an unembellished type with severe geometric lines.
Helvetica followed Futura. Haas Type Foundry’s (Münchenstein, Switzerland) Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann designed Helvetica in 1957. Its first version was called Neue Haas Grotesk (New Haas Grotesque). In 1960, the firm’s marketing director smartly changed the name to the more marketable “Helvetica.”
Monotoype Imaging’s fonts.com website lists 34 available Helvetica fonts plus a 51-font, Neue Helvetica’s® design upgrade pack. Neue Helvetica, a rework of the original, came to market in 1983. In 2004, Linotype introduced a Neue Helvetica Pro, an OpenType version with expanded foreign-language support.
Helvetica’s distinctive characteristics are its characters’ monotone stroke weights and vertical and horizontal stroke terminations, its equal, negative-space values around the letters, and, perhaps best, Helvetica is legibility when in motion.
Linotype describes Helvetica as an all-purpose type design that can deliver practically any message clearly and efficiently; it’s also a good choice for secondary type.
An interesting alternate choice for Helvetica, although it lacks the boldness, is American Eagle Outfitters logo typeface -- FF DIN.
FF DIN is another German-based typeface. Created by Albert-Jan Pool in 1995, it’s taller, thinner and more mechanical than Helvetica.
Geo Magazine uses FF DIN, as does the Centre Pompidou in Paris, for its directional signage.
In a Fontshop.com interview, Pool said legibility is the principal of information design. “You read a traffic sign,” he said, “and accept it as pure information. You don’t need to think it over again – Berlin is Berlin, what else could it be?”
Artdesignschools.com voted Helvetica as the most influential and widely used font. It rated Futura (spawned by the Bauer type foundry in 1927) second, but recommends it for not-so-large use.
In popularity, the school voted Garamond to follow Futura. Garamond was created in the 1540s for the French King Fancis. The modern version is Adobe Garamond, which appears in various editions of Harry Potter books.
Fourth is Bodoni, which has been in use for 300 years for, mostly, posters and displays. Bodoni is followed by Frutiger, which was first used as signage in Paris’ Charles De Gaulle airport. Adrian Frutiger designed the font for signs, symbols and displays.
Trajan bold, sixth, was the Titanic poster font and, number seven, Myriad, is Apple’s corporate font. The Minion font rates eight and Bembo nine, with Baskerville following after. John Baskerville created this font in 1757.
Next, the website successively rated Rockwell, Verdana (the Rocky film logo), Franklin Gothic, Times New Roman (commissioned by the British newspaper The Times in 1931), Gill Sans, Univers, Clarendon (once, but no longer used by the U.S. National Park Service for traffic signs), FF DIN (American Eagle), Avenir and Warnock Pro (Robert Slimbach designed Warnock Pro as an Adobe Originals type; it’s named after Adobe Systems co-founder John Warnock).
Finally, and although its true that the 1957 (James Dean era) Helvetica has become khaki-pants corporate, it remains, still, a practical and attractive type choice. Its hygienic image also allows you to go industrial -- and, its inherent Bauhaus character continues to advocate modern design.
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“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 allows for life.”
-- Adrian Frutiger