Helvetica can be characterised as neutral, pragmatic and rational of structure, like the country where it was created and which inspired its name, Switzerland. Its more computer-screen-friendly variant is Verdana. Hence, Microsoft took the Helvetica and, in order to avoid copyrights made its own copy of it. But Helvetica is a copyright protected design.
#New helvetica font windows#
Windows made it possible to resize and reshape the default typefaces: sizeable and potentially more elegant. Whilst the graphic industry’s computer, Apple Macintosh, could work with the original, the DOS and Unix-driven companies were limited by the fonts delivered with the printer. Many designers consider Helvetica to be a perfect typeface design. One may say that Helvetica is the perfection of what the pre-digital world offered. It was designed in 1957, at the turn of an era it is a symbol for the shift from the analogue to the digital world, marking the growth of post-war confidence and the European economy, as well as the very beginning of the digital age of word processing and the consumer society. One of the other typefaces, which was not by default on each printer, was Helvetica. Many of you will remember the awful Courier font.
The manufacturers forced us to use pre-defined, fixed sized fonts.
#New helvetica font drivers#
With the introduction of MS Windows (notably version 3.0 or 3.11) in our lives, everyone used to rely on the manufacturer’s printer drivers (you may remember HP Laserjet (or DeskJet)) and each new computer program came with floppy disks filled with the drivers of the then currently available printers. Helvetica is one of the most admirable typefaces. They are present on virtually every computer and will therefore show up on each printer. Three typefaces stand out when you select the font for a house style: Helvetica, Times New Roman and Garamond.
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