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Monotype Launches the First Redesign in 35 Years of the World's Most Ubiquitous Font, Helvetica (creativeboom.com)

Monotype today introduced the Helvetica Now typeface, a new family of fonts that have been carefully and respectfully re-drawn for the modern era. From a report: Consisting of 48 fonts and three optical sizes, the typeface has been produced from size-specific drawings and with size-specific spacing and is the first redesign in 35 years of what many argue is the world's most ubiquitous font, Helvetica. Every character has been redrawn and refit and a host of useful alternates have been added to help brands meet modern-day branding challenges. Espousing the simplicity, clarity, timelessness and global appeal of the typeface's storied tradition, the Helvetica Now design aims to be more sophisticated and graceful than its predecessors. An extremely popular and well-known typeface, the Helvetica family has been used by countless brands and creative professionals, in millions of designs since its inception. The typeface embodies clean and versatile design, and the Helvetica Now typeface continues the tradition established by the Helvetica and Neue Helvetica families while introducing a number of improvements.

25 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Still waiting for... by necro81 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'm still waiting for an update/refresh of Papyrus typeface!

    How else will James Cameron complete the next 17 Avatar movies?

    1. Re:Still waiting for... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      What you really want is "Comic Parchment", formerly known as "Comic Papyrus"

  2. Link to actual font by rminsk · · Score: 5, Informative

    https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/... To bad they do not show the font in the article.

    1. Re:Link to actual font by arglebargle_xiv · · Score: 2
      I've also prepared a version of the article in which every hipster term and approbatory adjective, e.g. simplicity, clarity, wider, clean, versatile, modern, etc, has been replaced by the word "wank". Here it is.

      Monotype has today introduced the Helvetica Now typeface, a wank wank wank and wank wank the wank wank wank to be wank wank. Wank wank wank and wank wank its wank for wank and wank. The wank wank is wank wank wank wank, wank, wank and wank. Wank wank wank wank wank. Written by Andy Mallalieu.

  3. Side by side? by chispito · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How difficult is it to show a side-by-side diagram instead of a bunch of mangled composite images of bottles and cut up posters and things?

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    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
    1. Re:Side by side? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      How difficult is it to show a side-by-side diagram...

      No no no - that's not artsy enough.

      Captcha: faiths

    2. Re:Side by side? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      From what I can tell the main improvement is that it works better with screens.

      Back when Apple switched to Helvetica it looked really bad on standard 100 PPI screens, because it was designed for print. With 4k 200 PPI screens it's pretty decent but not perfect.

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      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
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  4. Font Movie by Only+Time+Will+Tell · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would have never thought a documentary about a font would be interesting, but Helvetica the documentary was actually very interesting. I'd recommend it as an interesting watch on a lazy weekend.

    1. Re:Font Movie by Strider- · · Score: 2

      It's actually part of a trilogy. The other two films in the series are "Objectified" (about industrial design) and "Urbanized" (about architecture and urban design). All three are definitely worth a watch if you are at all a design nerd.

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      ...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
  5. Public Sans by jlv · · Score: 5, Informative

    How does Helvetica Now compare? Something that visually shows the difference would have been useful. I can't tell, either at the article or at Monotype's website.

    Meanwhile, also just announced was the free typeface Public Sans, "a strong, neutral typeface for text or display" (https://public-sans.digital.gov/). That page lets you see samples, but the github page (https://github.com/uswds/public-sans) shows excellent side-by-side and overlay comparisons. That is how a new/updated typeface should be introduced.

  6. Re:I hate sans-serif fonts in main text by MightyYar · · Score: 4, Funny

    It sure beats reading monospaced font!

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    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  7. Cue the Helvetica Scenario by brm · · Score: 3, Funny
    Get into your bunkers now.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  8. Re:I think you spelled Mac wrong by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I find the business of licensed uses of fonts interesting. It made sense for printed documents, but it gets hairy now with CSS being able to download custom fonts.

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    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  9. Given the abundance of freely available fonts... by ffkom · · Score: 2

    ... for all tastes and purposes, I clearly see no reason to ever buy a commercial one.

    Aren't "Source Sans Pro" and "Noto" already "professional enough" alternatives to Helvetica for you?

    And here for the more playful purposes: https://www.1001freefonts.com/

  10. why not link Monotype's site? by iggymanz · · Score: 2

    why not link Monotype's site with samples, instead of that eyecandy page?

    https://www.monotype.com/fonts...

  11. Re:Iono by sombragris · · Score: 2

    It uses a drop-in replacement look-alike, Nimbus Sans, which was donated to the GhostScript project by the foundry URW++. The foundry donated a full drop-in replacement font package covering the basic 35 PostScript standard fonts.

    More info:
    http://www.tug.org/fonts/deuts...
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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    -- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
  12. Re:Given the abundance of freely available fonts.. by ip_vjl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Given the abundance of freely available fonts ... for all tastes and purposes, I clearly see no reason to ever buy a commercial one.

    This just means that you don't know what kerning is, probably don't need or use ligatures, don't reproduce the font at very large sizes, and don't need to ever convert the font to tool paths (such as a cutter, or router).

    If you did, you would know that there is a WORLD of difference between most freebie fonts and ones that have been painstakingly worked over.

  13. Re: I think you spelled Mac wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You ruined his apple rant

  14. Re:I think you spelled Mac wrong by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Informative

    What exclusive agreement? Adobe licensed Helvetica and shipped it with pretty much every DTP-related product they had on any platform. Helvetica is in every Postscript printer, for example. Those aren't Mac only.

    Helvetica was never cheap to license which meant that Microsoft went hunting elsewhere pretty early on and licensed the cheap (in every sense of the word) knock-off "Arial". But that was a Microsoft decision, it wasn't made by Monotype or Apple.

    You can buy it here.

    I agree it isn't ubiquitous, most of the time a sans-serif font that looks like Helvetica is a knock off or a font inspired by it but redesigned for a specific purpose like the Rail Alphabet. But occasionally you get to see it in its glory, and it has to be said, it's one of the most beautiful fonts in the world.

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    You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  15. Re:Given the abundance of freely available fonts.. by chill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    None of which explains this level of douchieness:

    This font's webfont license is: Pay As You Go

    You get a total number of prepaid pageviews that can be used over time. This means that you will pre-pay for a number of pageviews, then you'll have to come back to order more after your site has been viewed that number of times.

    For example, if you order 250,000 page views, when your webpages using the webfonts have been viewed 250,000 times, you will need to buy the webfont package again for an additional number of prepaid pageviews.

    A usage meter in your order history will help you know how many prepaid pageviews you have left. You can check your usage at any time, and pre-pay for additional pageviews here as well.

    We will send an email notification when you have used 75% of your prepaid pageviews, and another reminder at 90%.

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    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  16. Really distracting to read by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 2

    An ideal font in my view is one that essentially gets out of the way and lets your brain focus on the actual content, and this one misses that mark. Looking at samples of actual blocks of text, there are two visibly different baselines: one for letters made of generally straight strokes like i, f, t, and v, and a slightly lower one for letters containing a loop like a, b, e, g, and s. It's just a pixel or two, but more than enough to be a distraction. Unclear if it might become less noticeable over time, but I don't get what useful purpose it could serve.

  17. Re:Helvetica? Who cares... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 2

    What a coincidence - I just opened a lemonade stand!

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    #DeleteChrome
  18. Re:I think you spelled Mac wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No. I will not buy it. I will never buy it. It is a fucking font. It is not worth billions of dollars. I'll use cuneiform on clay tablets before I give Monotype a dime.

  19. Re:Given the abundance of freely available fonts.. by apoc.famine · · Score: 4, Funny

    Come on now, I think we all know what keming is.

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    Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
  20. The Public Sans fonts are free. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 2

    Mod parent up. Links given above, made active:

    Public Sans Regular.

    Github page.

    Public Sans seems far better than Libre Franklin.