History Of Graphic Design
Posted on October 2nd, 2008 at 11:30 am
Posted in fonts
The font Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger. It is a very widely used sans-serif typeface. At the time Akzidenz-Grotesk was the popular sans-serif font in use in the Swiss market. Miedinger set out to develop a typeface that could compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk. The goal was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form and could be used on a wide variety of signage. It was originally called Neue Haas Grotesk. It’s name was changed to Helvetica in 1960 by the company that owned it to make it more marketable internationally. Helvetica comes from Confoederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland. The Helveti tribe was found in the Jura region of Switzerland which is probably where the name came from.
There are now many variants and alternate character sets for Helvetica, including Neue Helvetica (developed in 1983). Arial, designed in 1982 has identical character widths and is indistinguishable from Helvetica by most non-specialists. The capital C, G and R, as well as the lower case a, e r, and t are the main differences.
Helvetica is one of the most widely used sans-serif typefaces in the world today. There are variants for Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew and Greek alphabets. New York’s MTA uses Helvetica for all its subway signs. Canada’s federal government uses it as its identifying typeface. The Space Shuttle uses it on the side of the plane.
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Posted on September 22nd, 2008 at 8:40 am
Posted in fonts
A “serif” is a small decorative flourish at the ends of the strokes on a character in a font. Sans-serif means “without” the strokes (sans being the French word for without). Times New Roman is a very common serif font while Arial is a very common sans serif font.
It is generally considered that serif fonts are easier for the human eye to read because the serif makes the individual letters more distinctive and easier for our brains to recognize quickly and because the serifs help guide the eye along the lines in large blocks of text. Without the serif, our brain needs to spend longer identifying the letter, because the shape is less distinctive. Serif fonts are usually used for most printing (though sans-serif fonts are often used for headings and headlines). However, an exception is the use of type on computers. Because of the lower resolution of computer screens it can be much harder to read small serif characters on a computer. Therefore, it is recommended to use sans-serif fonts such as Verdana, Helvetica or Arial for small on-screen text. Here is an excellent review of the subject of serif vs sans-serif fonts an their usage on the web. The author studied over 50 empirical studies in typography and “found a definitive answer” to the question.
Before the term “sans-serif” became standard in English typography, a number of other terms, such as “gothic” were used. This can still be seen in the names of some typefaces such as Century Gothic. Other names included Egyptian, Antique, Grotesque and Doric. Serif types were originally referred to as Roman.
Sans-serif letter forms can be found in Latin, Etruscan and Greek inscriptions, as far back as the 5th century BC. However, sans-serif letters did not begin to appear in printed media until around 1800.
Serifs are thought to have originated in the Roman alphabet on words carved into stone. The most commonly accepted explanation is that the letter outlines were first brushed onto the stone with some type of paint and that the stone carvers simply followed the brush marks which flared at the ends and corners, thus creating the serifs. In 1968 Edward Catich published a book called The Origin Of The Serif which proposed this idea.
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