Helvetica was developed in the 1957 by a Swiss type face designer, named Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffman. The original name for Helvetica was Neue Haas Grotesk. During the 1960’s a German company changed the name of this type face to Helvetica, it means Swiss in Latin. Helvetica would be in the sans serif type classification; meaning that this type face does not have any serifs.
In the Documentary Helvetica the 4 designers that appeared were Matthew Carter, Wim Grouwel, Hermann Zapf , Lars Mullei. They all are designers in different fields such as graphic design and type design.Helvetica is a good type face to use in print media because of the heavy line strokes, In the 1960’s everyone wanted to use helvetica. That is why we have so many type faces that are similar to helvetica.
Three companies that use helvetica as their type is:
3M
American air lines
BMW
The relationship between swiss international style and helvetica is a very strong one. A major key to swiss international style is a sans serif type face. Helvetica has no serifs and is used very often.
