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Monotype Launches the First Redesign in 35 Years of the World's Most Ubiquitous Font, Helvetica (creativeboom.com) 115

Posted by msmash from the new-addition dept.
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.
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Monotype Launches the First Redesign in 35 Years of the World's Most Ubiquitous Font, Helvetica More

Monotype Launches the First Redesign in 35 Years of the World's Most Ubiquitous Font, Helvetica

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  • Still waiting for... (Score:5, Funny)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @01:00PM (#58410348) Journal
    I'm still waiting for an update/refresh of Papyrus [google.com] typeface!

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

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

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

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You can not bring that up without linking to this [youtube.com].

  • Link to actual font (Score:5, Informative)

    by rminsk ( 831757 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @01:00PM (#58410354)
    https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/... [myfonts.com] To bad they do not show the font in the article.

    • So, if you'd like all 48 versions of the font, it will set you back at least $1,680. Wow!

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Ed Avis ( 5917 )
        Are you sure? The linked article says

        Single weights of the Helvetica Now typeface are available for $/EUR 35 or GBP 30 each. The complete typeface family is available for $/EUR 299 or GBP 249.

        (I had to change the currency symbols because Slashdot still doesn't handle non-ASCII characters correctly.)

        • Good catch. I didn't notice that you could buy the whole set for a discount.

          But even at $300...REALLY??? It's just not that awesome of a font!

    • 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.

  • Side by side? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @01:01PM (#58410356)
    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?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

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

      No no no - that's not artsy enough.

      Captcha: faiths

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That was also what I was looking for, but I'm guessing we'd be disappointed even if they had one.

      In all likelihood the actual differences between Helvetica and Helvetica Now are likely going to be esoteric typography geek things. Like "we adjusted the f-t kerning distance by 0.02 points" or "we increased the radius of curvature on the top of the exclamation point by 4%". Tiny things that are only obvious when pointed out in a direct side-by-side comparison.

      (None the less, Monotype is more than happy to let

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Font Movie (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Only Time Will Tell ( 5213883 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @01:04PM (#58410366)
    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.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Strider- ( 39683 )

      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cstec ( 521534 )

        Objectified was surprisingly good; never expected I'd watch it more than once, and I'm not a design nerd.

        Bonus points for having a zeppelin in it!

    • Now that Unicode includes a large set of Emoji characters / glyphs, can we please dispense with the Roman 26 character alphabet and communicate and reply to one another using only Emoji characters? Could a new Beta version of Slashdot please enforce this?

      • We could but the issue of the Emoji font is still unresolved. Do you want you Emojis in Helvetica or Arial? Times? Garamond? Comic Sams?

  • They have their place all right, but I hate it when the main text in books is printed out in sans-serif fonts. I instinctively feel that I am being treated condescendingly when reading such books.

  • Public Sans (Score:5, Informative)

    by jlv ( 5619 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @01:14PM (#58410414)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ffkom ( 3519199 )
      So a fork of Libre-Franklin... ok... but they could have written what should motivate people to use it over the likes of the also free, open-source "Source Sans" or "Noto"?
    • Huh, I had no idea there was a federal web design office. I guess it makes sense. Somebody needs to get the mess that are government websites sorted out.
    • Mod parent up. Links given above, made active:

      Public Sans Regular. [digital.gov]

      Github page. [github.com]

      Public Sans seems far better than Libre Franklin.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jlv ( 5619 )

        Thanks, I screwed up when I put the links in parens and /. didn't linkify them.

        • I was unable to find a place to download the Public Sans font.

          Do you have a link?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Sabriel ( 134364 )

            You can download the files that compose the individual iterations from the Github site you linked:

            Webfonts are available in fonts/webfonts
            Opentype fonts for installing locally and for print applications are available in fonts/otf
            Variable fonts should be considered experimental, but can be found in fonts/variable
            Source files are available in source as Glyphs files.

            E.g. traversing to fonts/otf/PublicSans-Regular.otf will bring you to the page where you can download the OTF file to install the Public Sans Regu

    • Wow, now that is a really beautiful font!

  • Cue the Helvetica Scenario (Score:3, Funny)

    by brm ( 100455 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @01:17PM (#58410428)
    Get into your bunkers now.

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

  • Wake me up when they refresh Comic Sans!

  • Given the abundance of freely available fonts... (Score:3)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @01:31PM (#58410498)
    ... 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/ [1001freefonts.com]

    • Re:Given the abundance of freely available fonts.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ip_vjl ( 410654 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @01:50PM (#58410598) Homepage

      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.

      • Re:Given the abundance of freely available fonts.. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by chill ( 34294 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @02:23PM (#58410774) Journal

        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%.

        • That actually sounds pretty typical for photographic/typographic work. The license fee depends on the number of copies you print out. Back in the print newspaper/magazine days, the license fee for a photograph depended on the page it would be used on (cover was most expensive, pages near the front were more expensive than ones near the back), coverage (full page was more expensive than half page was more expensive than quarter page), and number of copies which would be printed.

          For online sites, that la

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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ffkom ( 3519199 )
        I know very well what kerning is and what bad kerning looks like. But fonts like "Source Sans Pro" have none of that. And while Adobe is unable to write a single not-security-flawed line of code, they are still competent in authoring fonts.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ravrazor ( 69324 )
          Sometime soon, Adobe is will let PS and the rest of their software either go subscription or the way of Flash...They don't really care much. Adobe is very much a (scary) data analytics company [adobe.com] from now into the foreseeable future...

        • Adobe has one of the most competent digital typography teams on the planet.

          I am going to visit the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp on Friday where the original dies for Garamond are displayed.

    • Fonts are a technology. It is an interesting tech, because there is a lot of art involved, but they are still a technology to enable people to read words. And with any technology there are a many trade-offs for different use cases. And they have a loooooooong history, primarily drive by the tech that was available back then.

      For instance, the font used to highway signage was painstakingly designed to enable a driver at high speed to see and read a road sign at the maximum distance possible. This was meticulo

  • Why? (Score:2)

    by Zorro ( 15797 )

    All you need is Times New Roman.

  • why not link Monotype's site? (Score:3)

    by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @01:35PM (#58410522)

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

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

  • ...So, what's the next "in" font? Wingdings? Groovey!

  • Helvetica is best in the way that it is sort of kinda an acceptable replacement for Futura if you want/need an alternative and have money to burn for stupid and obscenely high license fees. This new one is no exception. I totally get and applaud IBM for calling it quits with this stupid shit and building their own font and releasing it as open font after spending tens of millions on licensing fees for 7+ decades.

    As for Helvetica now: They actually improved Helvetica, AFAICT, that's neat, but Futura still ow

  • Is it possible some copyright is expiring and something is going into the public domain? So all action must be taken to preserve and perpetuate the income stream of the rent seekers?

  • It's difficult to say, "yeah, we haven't touched this in 30+ years so that will be $1500 for the files" so they're going to fluff out a lot of man hours, mostly marketing and advertising bullshit, and then watch the checks roll in. Mono(poly)type at its finest.

  • Really distracting to read (Score:3)

    by SlaveToTheGrind ( 546262 ) on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @02:54PM (#58410930)

    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 [monotype.com], 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.

    • Ugh... that page is essentially full-screen video without the video. That is what happens when you get an artist to do the job of a designer.

    • An ideal font in my view is one that essentially gets out of the way and lets your brain focus on the actual content

      Sounds like you have a use case that relies on conveying textual information. That is only a small subset of use cases for fonts.

  • Every serif expunged, every trace of humanity. Clean cold and impersonal, Helvetica is the font of the robotic future where practical reigns supreme and there is no room for art. It is the font of Big Corporations and Big Government, the font of authority and control. There is no place for friendliness or personality in Helvetica. No warmth, no character, no love.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ffkom ( 3519199 )
      In our robotic future, the only font we'll need is the laser-tattoo QR-code on our fore-head, which only serves as a back-up to the mandatory RFID-implant. Fonts were made for human reading, and are thus unnecessary under robot rule.

      • Too much fuss. Mr Robot Overlord wants to know who you are, he shoves a needle into you and check up on the DNA.

    • Love is more than just giving scribes repetitive stress injuries, you know.

  • Helvetica is everywhere for a reason. So is Times Roman. Classic typefaces, what type is supposed to look like.

    The last time I did serious font research was designing maps for a GPS-based asset-tracking system. I wanted a font that was distinctive, but not too distinctive. After some looking through Adobe's font catalog I settled on Myriad [adobe.com]. It worked fine until word came from On High that we must emulate the visual appearance of Google Maps. So be it.

    I use Souvenir [wikipedia.org] for my resume, BTW.

    ...laura

    • Fonts have very specific technological application. I once saw a font that was specifically designed for maps but I can't find the link now. There was an example on the site and it looked really readable.

      The map fonts are very specifically designed for legibility in very small sizes.

  • nothing will ever match the elegance, austerity, and gravitas of comic sans.

  • Mess with them Helvetica nerds: http://fancyham.com/shirts/Fan... [fancyham.com]

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