Helvetica: Hero of Font. Is it Time for a Facelift?

Helvetica is a popular font or typeface. Companies as large as American Airlines, Panasonic, Netflix, Google and Toyota have used it or are using it now. Even though the font is all over the place, it is not without problems. In small spaces, the letters crunch together in a way that makes them difficult to read. The spaces between the letters can be quite small in some sizes. In order to remedy these problems, the Helvetica powers that be have come up with a redesign. This is the typeface's first redesign in more than 36 years.

Monotype is the company that controls the licensing for Helvetica. It is located in Massachusetts. The company has updated all of the 40,000 characters in use for the typeface. It has also created three new sizes of the typeface for use on all types of surfaces, from highway billboards to the smallest of mobile device screens. The updated font is called Helvetica Now.

Even the type director at Monotype was initially skeptical that the updates were needed. His initial reaction was to the effect of, "Do we really need another Helvetica?" However, he came around when he stopped to take a look at the online reactions. About half of people assumed that Helvetica was dead, and the other half were excited about the potential updates.

Like other typefaces, Helvetica seems to be a love it or hate it type of thing. For some people, they use Helvetica all the time and for almost everything. For others, they cannot stand it and avoid it at all costs. There seems to be little in the way of people who use it sometimes or a lot of the time. People either always use it or never do.

A lot of people did feel like Helvetica needed changes. This is regardless of whether or not they actively used the typeface. People noted that the letter "L" looked too much like the number "1" in the typeface. The new Helvetica Now can be used for small text such as captions under an image, footnotes and other small font needs. For more information click here https://www.npr.org/2019/04/20/715499199/helvetica-the-iconic-font-both-loved-and-scorned-gets-its-1st-redesign-in-36-yea.