Designers should understand that the same font doesn’t work for every design. We need to train designers to use fonts other than Helvetica. We have so many great fonts ( see previous article) that Helvetica should no longer be used for everything.
Instead, we should refocus on the designers and people choosing to use Helvetica. Helvetica is often blamed for the bad designs that bad designers create. Majoor points out that the problem isn’t Helvetica instead the user. In the past 50 years, there have been many beautiful graphic designs using Helvetica, but this has more to do with the quality of the designers using it than with the quality of Helvetica as a typeface. Martin Majoor articulates well why Helvetica is hated by so many designers. While these updates are good and even necessary it doesn’t change the fact that Helvetica is hated by so many designers. Therefore it was a shrewd move for Monotype to create a Helvetica with different optical sizes, micro, body and headline. We now demand that the same typeface be used as headlines, body copy, footnotes all while remaining legible.
HELVETICA NOW FONT UPDATE
At a base level, it makes sense to update Helvetica to work better with modern technology.įurthermore, our view of a type family and how a typeface should work has changed since 1983. Meaning that Helvetica currently isn’t optimized to be used on 21st-century computers, even though it is one of the most popular typefaces online.
Which is needed, the previous Helvetica Neue was created in 1983 before open type in 1996. Helvetica Now is being billed by Monotype as the Helvetica for the modern age.