Monotype Launches the First Redesign in 35 Years of the World's Most Ubiquitous Font, Helvetica (creativeboom.com) 115
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.
Re:I think you spelled Mac wrong (Score:4, 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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AFAIR you couldn't change the system font.
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I doubt that. It was only 30 years ago and lots of teens used it. I was one.
If you're Jim DeFrisco, thanks for the work!
My 64 had a REU and a 1351 mouse in high school and that was very useful!
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I used GEOS! And I don't remember Pete. He must have not been in the cool crowd.
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You hate a group of people because they use a specific typeface? What else triggers you?
Re: I think you spelled Mac wrong (Score:2, Insightful)
You ruined his apple rant
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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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.
Agree (Score:1)
Actually, going back to cuneiform will eliminate a lot of hate speech for two reasons. First, there were fewer hateful words in the past. Second, only educated people will know the language.
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No. I will not buy it. I will never buy it. It is a fucking font. It is not worth billions of dollars.
Agreed. It's not worth billions. It's worth $35 which is what you can have it for. Or do you say that in general you don't think creative arts are worth paying for? In which case I wish you from the bottom of my heart a "fuck you".
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Arial is much more ubiquitous than Helvetica, but it has the advantage that all the characters have the same width so you can basically replace the font directly.
And since Helvetica was licensed to ADOBE for use in PostScript means Helvetica is also used as one of the standard fonts (Times New Roman is the other one) in PDF, which is very ubiquitous. Times was chosen because the first laser printers were very rough and the font was designed for newspaper print in the 30s during, an application where speed o
Still waiting for... (Score:5, Funny)
How else will James Cameron complete the next 17 Avatar movies?
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What you really want is "Comic Parchment", formerly known as "Comic Papyrus"
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You can not bring that up without linking to this [youtube.com].
Link to actual font (Score:5, Informative)
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So, if you'd like all 48 versions of the font, it will set you back at least $1,680. Wow!
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(I had to change the currency symbols because Slashdot still doesn't handle non-ASCII characters correctly.)
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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!
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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)
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How difficult is it to show a side-by-side diagram...
No no no - that's not artsy enough.
Captcha: faiths
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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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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
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Font Movie (Score:5, Interesting)
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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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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!
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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?
I hate sans-serif fonts in main text (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I hate sans-serif fonts in main text (Score:5, Funny)
It sure beats reading monospaced font!
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I'm a software engineer, I can't read anything unless it's monospaced. Seriously, this post, no idea what it says!
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That's because they put the green zebra on the endangered species list as a result of the overwhelming slaughter that gave us all that green zebra paper.
You didn't think we stopped using it because it went out of style, did you?
We replaced it philosophically with the Green Movement. Have to have our green somewhere...
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You sound like a puppet of Big Green.
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In Soviet Putinville, monospaced font beats you!
Public Sans (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.
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The Public Sans fonts are free. (Score:3)
Public Sans Regular. [digital.gov]
Github page. [github.com]
Public Sans seems far better than Libre Franklin.
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Thanks, I screwed up when I put the links in parens and /. didn't linkify them.
Link to download the Public Sans font? (Score:2)
Do you have a link?
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You can download the files that compose the individual iterations from the Github site you linked:
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
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Wow, now that is a really beautiful font!
Cue the Helvetica Scenario (Score:3, Funny)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Helvetica? Who cares... (Score:2)
Wake me up when they refresh Comic Sans!
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Wake me up when they refresh Comic Sans!
Good morning! With the free Comic Neue [comicneue.com], you can make your lemonade stand look like a Fortune 500 company.
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What a coincidence - I just opened a lemonade stand!
Given the abundance of freely available fonts... (Score:3)
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)
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)
None of which explains this level of douchieness:
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For online sites, that la
Re:Given the abundance of freely available fonts.. (Score:5, Funny)
Come on now, I think we all know what keming is.
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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.
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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)
All you need is Times New Roman.
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No, chiefly because it is the default Sans on PostScript/PDF which is what Apple uses widely on MacOS/X
why not link Monotype's site? (Score:3)
why not link Monotype's site with samples, instead of that eyecandy page?
https://www.monotype.com/fonts... [monotype.com]
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why not link Monotype's site with samples, instead of that eyecandy page?
https://www.monotype.com/fonts... [monotype.com]
You presumably have to pay to access their site?
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no, you can read that page without paying
where did you get that idea?
Just in time to fall out of style (Score:1)
...So, what's the next "in" font? Wingdings? Groovey!
And Futura still kicks its ass. (Score:2)
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
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Avenir and Avenir Next are the replacements for Futura, fonts widely used by me personally
Why fix it if it ain't broken? (Score:2)
Really, they want to justify charging $1500 for it (Score:2)
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)
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.
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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.
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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.
The typeface of Big Brother (Score:2)
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.
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Too much fuss. Mr Robot Overlord wants to know who you are, he shoves a needle into you and check up on the DNA.
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Love is more than just giving scribes repetitive stress injuries, you know.
What type is supposed to look like (Score:2)
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
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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.
Helvetica is revered, but (Score:2)
nothing will ever match the elegance, austerity, and gravitas of comic sans.
Arial Now (Score:1)
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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... [tug.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Helvetica is not free (Score:2)