#METRO HISTORY TYPEFACE MOVIE#

Neue Helvetica (New Helvetica), a modern 1983 version with unified character width and height.

It can be used only in its black and bold version (oblique and condensed included) and has an outline version that was never available online.

Helvetica Rounded, designed in 1978, which comprises of rounded stroke terminators.

Helvetica Textbook, a product of altering characters to for informal design.

Mathew Carter’s Helvetica Compressed, quite similar with Helvetica Inserat, but still not identical.

Stempel’s Helvetica Light designed by Arthur Ritzel and artistic director Erich Schultz-Anker.

The alphabet was not the only distinguishing criterion, and Helvetica soon evolved to: Helvetica varied many times, as a result of which there are multiple types and variants available (Korean, Hindi, Cyrillic, Japanese, Vietnamese, Greek, and many others). The era of modern industry was starting, and communication had to be clean and fast! Helvetica Variations & Types While modern architecture was slowly stripping away superfluous architecture, Swiss typography followed and snipped off stone-carved and frivolous serifs. It appeared in 1956, created deliberately by Eduard Hoffman and Max Miedinger to cherish the new Swiss Style, giving it extraordinary importance, almost as it was a postwar utopian mission. The typeface is currently used in many modern operating systems and other electronic displays. Since then it has been modified into a range of languages and variations. Helvetica has become one of the most popular fonts in the world. Let’s check what makes it so powerful, and see whether you should use it in your upcoming design projects: History of HelveticaĪs one could conclude by the name, Helvetica has Swiss origins (at first, it was called Neue Haas Grotesk, even if that probably sounds like a 1980s German factory instead of a font). You may not really see it, but Helvetica is there – it is on all products, websites, packages, or reading papers.

#METRO HISTORY TYPEFACE MOVIE#

The font is so popular that there is a book and a documentary movie about it.īut how does it come? How can this simple and inconspicuous font be everywhere around us? New York’s MOMA also featured Helvetica, and the typeface won multiple awards and recognition because of it. Other sectors where Helvetica is highly popular are fashion (the iconic Helvetica T-shirt writing saying ‘I hate Helvetica’) and tech producers (Intel, Apple, Microsoft, etc.). Nowadays, the Helvetica font family can be described as ubiquitous, which is why it spells so many important brands (Nestle, Lufthansa, American Apparel, etc.). Observed from the technical aspect, Helvetica is originally a sans serif typeface, the ancestor of Berthold’s 1898 Akzidenz-Grotesk typeface. The removal of the bridge silhouettes creates a similar problem.Helvetica is definitively (as font geeks with a repulsive turn of phrases like to say) one of the most popular fonts of our time. Upon seeing the printed map in situ, the darker water is also much harder to see and makes it difficult to orient the metro lines in reference to the water. The Gazette interviews graphic designer Cameron Booth, who, on his Transit Map blog referred to the map as “so distinctive that it couldn’t possibly be from anywhere else in the world than the city it represents – and this is definitely all Montréal’s.” Booth laments the loss of the purple colouring of the commuter train lines for the less conspicuous dark blue which makes it more difficult to see. The new STM logo is also used and the no smoking symbol has finally been removed. The new map varies little from the old one, most changes are aesthetic, bringing the design in line with the rest of the STM’s promotional and (non-permanent) wayfinding material.Ĭhanges include the use of the STM’s proprietary font (except for the station names which remain in Univers, the same font used to communicate the station names on the black “ribbons” on station walls), elevator symbols are placed beside the station names (the STM seems to have forgotten that Bonaventure now has an elevator), a simplified and darkened shoreline, and darker colours indicating AMT commuter trains. The new map will gradually replace the old one over the next few weeks.

Two days later I was sitting on the Metro, looking at a new map. Just the other day, I was sitting on the Metro, surrounded by posters and ads featuring the STM’s newish marketing strategy and commented to myself that it was surprising that the ubiquitous map had yet to be changed. Before and after of the old and new map (by Kate McDonnell at Montreal City Weblog.

Metro history typeface