Helvetica Forever

Helvetica Forever

This time around we have a brief review on what may be the best typeface ever created, none other than… Helvetica. In the book Helvetica Forever : Story of a Typeface by Victor Malsy & Lars Müller. Published just last year, the book gives a very in depth history of the great typeface. Everything from early samples of the typeface from it’s trade show brochure release to historic finds like the original notes on the creation of the typeface from Hoffman’s original notebook.

As a typical design dork, I notice things like weird / interesting covers. How Helvetica is this cover, a screenprinted canvas? It doesn’t get more utilitarian than that, I’m in!

Is there really any comment needed here? This is about as mid-century Swiss designer as it gets in my book.

Examples of prior use are featured in the book. I particularly liked this really basic notebook.

Some more examples of the book from Robin Benson’s Amazon review of the book including Haas’ trade show poster for it’s release (top right) and Massimo Vignelli’s 1962 poster for Knoll (bottom right)

Notes from Hoffman’s original notebook used during the creation of Helvetica. The date on the upper right side of the left page says 1957! Talk about something standing the test of time!

The book covers the history of the great typeface from it’s beginning with countless historical examples provided. It also has an entire section dedicated to comparing Helvetica to other sans serif typefaces. All in all, if you’re a font dork or a helvetica junkie (such as myself), this is a very interesting read which is definitely worth checking out.