An analysis of an interesting typeface
One of my favourite typefaces is Helvetica, particularly Helvetica Neue Light.
This is Helvetica Neue Light 48pt:
Helvetica was created in 1957 by Eduard Hoffmann and Max Miendinger and is a widely used sans-serif typeface. It was designed as a simple, smooth, straight font that differed from the overly complicated fonts of that time in America. Some characteristics of the typeface include a tall x-height, which makes it easier to read in smaller point sizes, a narrow t and f, a square-looking s and a rounded off square tail of the uppercase R. Helvetica Light was designed by Stempel's artistic director Erich Schultz-Anker, in conjunction with Arthur Ritzel.
Some uses of the typeface Helvetica include many signs around the world for trains, shops, and other signs and messages that need to be clearly communicated. Examples of the commercial use of Helvetica includes American Apparel, Jeep, Panasonic, BMW and Kawasaki. Apple has used Helvetica widely in iOS products including the iPod, iPhone and iMacs. More recently the company have used Neue Helvetica on products such as the iPhone 4.
Helvetica is widely used by by the US government and across the USA as well as Canada in designs for such things as the US television rating system, NASA's space shuttle orbiter and NYC Metropolitan Transportation Authority
uses Helvetica for many of its subway signs now, though it was not adopted as the official font for signage until 1989.
Neue Helvetica is a reworking of the typeface with a more structurally unified set of heights and widths. It was developed at a linotype subsidiary, (Linotype's daughter company), D. Stempel AG. Erik Spiekermann was the design consultant and designed the literature for the launch in 1983. Other changes made to the typeface include improved legibility, heavier punctuation marks and increased spacing in the numbers. Neue Helvetica also uses a numerical design classification scheme, like Univers.
Since Helvetica's original launch it has been worked on by a variety of designers to adapt it from hot metal to photocomposition to digital. As technologies improved, these limitations were removed, allowing total design freedom. In 1983 the complete Helvetica font family was carefully redrawn and expanded to create Neue Helvetica, a synthesis of aesthetic and technical refinements and modifications that resulted in improved appearance, legibility and usefulness.
There are both subtle and more obvious changes made to the original Helvetica design. This includes widened crossbars on the lowercase f and t to increase character recognition in text and to be more consistent with the overall design characteristics. Some of the punctuation has been reworked for better balance and the entire font family has additional weights - eight plus italics for the regular and obliques for the expanded versions. There are 51 weights in total, many more than the original family. New x-heights compensate for the illusion that the type looks shorter as it gets heavier in weight whereas in the previous version all x-heights were the same.
Uses of Helvetica Neue Expanded Ultra Light - another variation of Helvetica Neue - include the logo of The Ellen DeGeneres Show and the iOS 7 typeface on the iPhone.
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