Helvetica Now or Helvetica “Too Late?”
A perspective on Monotype’s newest release of Helvetica for the digital age.
Helvetica. You either love it or hate it, right? There is no in-between. For some designers, it’s a classic example of Swiss design: elegant, minimal, timeless. For others, it’s vanilla, bland and boring — a typeface in search of a personality. Its perceived shortcomings notwithstanding, Helvetica has enjoyed enormous success over the years. It has become one of the world’s best known and most visible typefaces and has appeared in countless brand identities and ad campaigns, including Target, Knoll, Toyota, BMW, and Panasonic. It even has its own movie.
And now Monotype — the type house which currently owns the licensing rights to Helvetica — has revamped the typeface into a new version they’ve just released that they are calling “Helvetica Now.” Props to Monotype’s marketing team on the buzzy new name. It certainly sounds innovative. I’m no Tobias Frere-Jones, but as a designer and a casual type nerd, I wanted to find out if all the fuss was really worth it. I mean, this is Helvetica. Do you really want to mess with it? It’s like changing the recipe for Coca-Cola. And with a family licensing price tag of $299, is it worth buying it again? Jeez, I already bought it on vinyl and CD, now you want me to buy it again!
The Origins of Helvetica
Apart from being one of the most ubiquitous typefaces in the world, Helvetica is also one of the oldest still in use today. First designed in the 1950s by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffman, the typeface existed in a variety of forms, including metal and film, before it was completely redrawn for the digital era in the form of Neue Helvetica in 1983. This is probably the version of the font most designers will be familiar with. Helvetica Neue has taken its lumps over the years — particularly when used in digital products. Google stopped using it in 2011, in lieu of a custom font that frankly looks better (Roboto). Apple followed suit in 2013 with its own branded font (San Francisco). So did IBM. And then Netflix. My current employer, Glassdoor, licensed Helvetica Neue for a number years as part of its brand identity system. It was abandoned in 2017 in favor of the warmer and more friendly (and more cost-effective) sans-serif typeface Lato, designed by the Warsaw-based designer Łukasz Dziedzic. So does all this mean it’s time for a facelift? Is it time to try and bring an old classic into this century?
The Making of Helvetica Now
Monotype Studio decided it was time for a typographic facelift. They spent four years redrawing every letterform and working out some of the kinks with the typeface: primarily decades-old spacing and legibility shortcomings. The typeface is now available in three optical sizes. Helvetica Now Micro, designed for use on small screens, recasts the font with more open forms, open spacing and larger accents. Helvetica Now Display evens out the kerning, or letter spacing, for larger type sizes. Helvetica Now Text, the workhorse of the three, is intended for visually “crowded” use cases, so it incorporates more white space into the design for greater legibility and less reader fatigue.
“Today, we’re asking Helvetica to do more than it ever has before. Previous versions of the typeface weren’t designed to be used in graphic applications that have developed over the last 30 years. As a result, older versions of the font were lacking in some important areas,” said Charles Nix, type director at Monotype. “Helvetica Now solves the legibility and style challenges that brands using Helvetica have consciously and unconsciously faced for years. The design introduces a new chapter in the Helvetica story — expanding its look and utility, while reinvigorating its heritage.”
Helvetica Now also restores some of the original characteristics of the font that have been lost along the way — a “single story” lowercase “a,” a capital “R” with straight legs. These were some of the details that gave Helvetica its original charm and that were lost with Helvetica Neue. Curiously, Monotype seems to not have explicitly embraced a “screen-first” approach in their re-vamp of Helvetica Now (like Google Spectral has). Monotype hasn’t mentioned that they re-hinted Helvetica Now to display better on-screen, but one must presume that they have.
Reception by the Design Community
For the most part, Helvetica Now seems to have been well-received by the design community — or at least those in the more old-school print and brand design disciplines.
“Helvetica Now is the tummy-tuck, facelift and lip filler we’ve been wanting, but were too afraid to ask for,” said Abbott Miller, partner at Pentagram. “It offers beautifully drawn alternates to some of Helvetica’s most awkward moments, giving it a surprisingly, thrillingly contemporary character.”
“I like that there are more weights and alternate characters like the ‘R’. The typeface feels very familiar but to the trained eye, you can spot subtle differences — which I like,” shared Chris Do, founder, The Futur, and a Helvetica fan.
Final Thoughts
For me, I love AND I hate Helvetica. It has always seemed like a typeface that relied heavily on context to define itself — like the wallflower that needs to stand next to the loud guy at a party to have any personality at all. Or, in the case of American Apparel’s branding, it’s so bland that its blandness makes some sort of ironic, cheeky statement.
Is Helvetica Now worth the investment? If you’re a brand that has built substantial equity in Helvetica or Helvetica Neue like a Target, FedEx or Knoll? Absolutely. If you’re a graphic designer obsessed with tiny typographic details such as alternate characters and have always loved Helvetica? Go for it. If you’re a designer working for a government agency that is designing for use cases where small type needs to be balanced and clearly legible across many screens and many devices? Perhaps. But for the rest of us, the differences between Helvetica, Helvetica Neue and Helvetica Now will most likely seem negligible — perhaps even undetectable. And there are just too many other solid, sans-serif choices out there that have more personality while still being just as clean, modern, versatile — and affordable. Consider: Gotham, Proxima Nova, Avenir Next, Brandon Grotesque, National, FF Meta, FF Din or FF Bau. And don’t forget old classics such as Futura, Univers or Akzidenz Grotesk. And don’t forget to support your small, independent type foundries whenever you can.
Want to see for yourself? You can download a free weight of Helvetica Now from Monotype.
Note: If you wish to learn more about Apple’s font San Francisco, you can read “The Secret of the Apple’s New San Francisco Fonts” article by Akinori Machino. You can also download San Francisco family from Apple.com.
