Helvetica® Now: An Interview
Helvetica® Now, the impressive new design by the Monotype Studio, was the bestselling new font in 2019 on MyFonts. We interviewed the designers to learn more!
What inspired you to design this typeface? Were you designing for a specific use case or customer? Or were you more focused on a particular artistic vision? Or some combination of the both?
First off, Helvetica® Now was truly a group effort involving eight type designers and dozens of people at Monotype, so the inspiration didn’t come from any one person or place. But for me, the first question I asked when I was approached with this project was: Why? What’s wrong with Neue Helvetica?
There are three answers to that question: First, it had been thirty-five years since Helvetica was digitized, and a lot has happened in that time. Back then there was no internet connecting us, no email, and Neue really struggles to meet those modern demands. Second, Neue Helvetica is based on one master, so one size of type that’s being made to work for every size of type. This relates back to that first answer, because Neue performs poorly at the small sizes required by modern devices and screens. Third, Helvetica has matured from its early days as the darling of the International Style and Modernism. It’s become an expressive typeface, a typeface with postmodern tendencies. So, the time was right for an update that considered all the ways the typeface is used.
Walk us through the process of designing this typeface. Was there anything different about it, compared to your usual process? Did it come along more easily than others, or were there unique challenges?
If the biggest thing in the history of typography is put before you, you take a deep breath and say, ‘ok, how do we make sure we do this correctly?’
When you go back to the original source, it’s so much more readable and that doesn’t have to do with the forms themselves, but the spacing. It was about studying the spaces between the letters and figuring out what the methodology was early on, how it made the type so much easier to read, and then restoring that and improving upon it. Helvetica was never cut for micro, so I could drive beyond the limits of what was known for Helvetica and say, ‘how would it behave in relationship to this circumstance?’ Modern screens have far higher resolution than any printer — especially watch screens or iPhone screens — so a lot of the proofing we did for micro sizes was on screen devices.
We created these sizes with the prescription that you would use the micro for 3, 4, 5 and 6 point, text for 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and anything beyond that — 13 to infinity — would lean on the display range. What we’ve created in Helvetica Now is the potential to see Helvetica completely differently.
Looking ahead, are there new projects you’re excited about? Anything you haven’t tried yet but are eager to explore?
There are so many classic families in the Monotype library that the Studio is eager to revisit — and some that are already being worked on. Stay tuned!
