Helvetica Forever: Story of a Typeface Hardcover – February 27, 2009

I’m really familiar with the book, it’s fantastic! I owned it but I lost it in my move back east. Now it costs a fortune to replace. I would think the author and publisher would want to make some money and do a paperback edition but I guess they’re not interest in money 🤷‍♂️. If they did a second edition I’d immediately buy it.

Who would have thought that the development of the world's favorite typeface would provide such a riveting read but it does. The local heroes are designer Max Miedinger encouraged by the Haas type foundry boss Eduard Hoffmann. Despite the availability of several sans faces in the fifties the company wanted to avoid losing market share for their type foundry and the best way to do it was to develop a new face, in a very crowded sans market.The book reveals the creation of the face with an amazing amount of fascinating detail, fortunately not just with words but plenty of period graphics and sample type settings (in the type founders favorite word foe sample setting: Hamburger). A real find and reproduced in color are twenty-seven pages of Hoffmann's personal Journal where he stuck in examples of setting as Miedinger evolved the letter designs. I found it interesting that the only face that was included as a comparison was Berthold's Akzidenz Gotesk (Standard Medium and Bold in English speaking countries) which, in display sizes, was the first type of choice for 'Swiss school' designers even though it only had two weights and no italic.There is an intriguing chapter called A Comparison by Indra Kupferschimd, which looks at all the before and after Helvetica faces and you'll be surprised at how many there were. The success of the face, from 1957 onwards, persuaded several type founders to 'Helveticize' their fonts by changing a, c, e, s, t and cap equivalents to look as much as possible like the real thing.The book is nicely produced in the typical Swiss style though that does mean unfortunately that tiny type has to be used somewhere and in this case it's the extensive captions and notes: 6.5 point seems too small to me for ease of reading.Designers and type fans will enjoy the story of a face that is reliable, practical, neutral and with some very sexy letters.***SEE INSIDE THE BOOK by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

Excellent condition!!!

If you're a type designer, the chances are you already know about the origins of Helvetica. I purchased a copy in the hope that I could understand Helvetica's past to formulate a response to its increased use in modern times. While it did indeed offer me this, there wasn't much content as I'd have hoped. I believe this book is more style over substance, only half of this book actually discusses Helvetica. The other half is pointless letters sent to and from Hoffmann and Meindinger which, although slightly interesting, feels like I've been cheated out of £5 or so. Even so it was an interesting read if not slightly biased (as predicted with a title of "Helvetica Forever" and the fact that it was produced by Lars Muller Publishers). It discussed the popularity of Univers over Helvetica, but didn't explain the reason behind this; it was simply a much stronger typeface. Although I don't agree with the opinion that Helvetica is perfectly balanced, or "communicates the most fundamental of all swiss traits- neutrality.", it was an interesting read.And by the way, no typeface can ever be neutral ;)