Specimen for Helvetica Compressed by Mergenthaler Linotype

Monotype Newsletter 92 on the occasion of Helvetica being licensed for Monotype’s hot-metal and photo composition machines, 1972

.

Okay Type:
They (Jackson and his cat) have some really super fonts in the making, but only Alright Sans is ready for licensing yet. I had kept track of this interesting amalgam of a sans for quite some time already as it gets mentioned almost every day on typophile. Not purely humanist in style and proportions it combines open forms with the regularities of a classic grotesque and daring slanted a’s and g’s as alts in the italic. Makes me think of good ol’ Syntax and the Ideal Italic again.
Due to my (meanwhile) mission to get as many different families as possible, I just boughts five single weights at MyFonts because one can only get the whole family on Okay Type’s website. (Why?)

Exljbris:
Now while I was there I did what probably everybody does at MyFonts from time to time—getting a couple of free fonts. Not many of them are suitable for professional design work, but in my opinion the typefaces by Jos Buivenga are. I got some complementary styles to the free version of Calluna, a versatile text face (and since Christmas joined by a sans to become a super-family) plus the flamboyant conceptional experiment that is Geotica—a high-contrast Didone only built up of geometric elements. The different fills, swashes and ornaments make it an exciting display venture.

.

The Asset:
All those typefaces hopefully complement the ones I got earlier this year:

Eames Century Gothic* Modern: I just had to order immediately, it simply is the impersonation of Erik van Blokland. One can dive deep into the individual shapes for days, the display styles make instant logos (beware, not allowed in basic license), the ornaments and numeral fonts are a playful plus. So enjoyable.

Hard to avoid the typefoundry Bold Monday this year, especially Nitty, which is surprisingly comfortable to type text in and Panno by Pieter van Rosmalen. I started out with the friendly priced sampler and got the full family of Paul van der Laan’s humanist sans Flex later.

Half way through my shopping spree Commercial Type, or rather Christian Schwartz announced the release of Neue Haas Grotesk to be near. Halleluja! Ever since working on the Helvetica Forever project I wished for that to happen. (We actually wanted to type-set the book in this newly digitized version back in 2007, but somehow either it wasn’t ready by that time or they didn’t manage to sort out the legal issues, so we ended up with Neue Helvetica.) I have no idea whether I’d ever use neue Neue Haas Grotesk, it’s just so tempting to get and be it only to show the world how Helvetica was meant to look like. But—maybe later.

Because all of a sudden the tide was turning: the notice of some unexpected debits abrupty shrunk my font-budget by almost 50% (now ~1500 €). But there was still so much left in my FontShop, A2 and MyFonts Carts :/
So these, among others, are typefaces I unfortunately had to skip (I should make a shortlist of nearly-bought fonts at some point):

Freight Micro, Text and Display I’m in love with this extensive super family by Joshua Darden/Garage Fonts for quite some time now. Especially the Micro (Italic) styles have great display qualities, too, although originally designed for extra small text.

Hercules, a quirky Modern/Scotch by František Štorm and also his
Farao, a playful take on the Clarendon genre. I like most of his typefaces although you realise some similarities after a while (the a’s e.g. are typical), but that is the case with other great type designers, too, like Gerard Unger or Fred Smeijers (his g’s and ß’s).

Lavigne got postponed as well, a dulcet text face by Ramiro Espinoza with great ampersand and complementing display styles for even more lavish demeanor.

Relato by Eduardo Manso attracted me with its distinct cursive. The rather low-contrast makes it a designated book face suitable for long-distance reading.

Iowan Old Style by John Downer, a calm, no-fuss text typeface, quite atypical for him actually.

Grot 10 from newly formed foundry A2. I especially like the true italics, which are still rather unusual for an “old-style” grotesque. There have been a lot of these kind of revivals popping up lately, like Plan by Typotheque, Fakt from Ourtype, Embarcadero by Mark van Bronkhorst or the recently expanded Founders Grotesque from Klim, to mention a few. Type expert Stephen Coles even names 2010 the year of the Helvetica replacements.

On that note, let me put you off until the third and final installment with some more shopping-occurrences, my final receipt and conclusion.

Buried deep down on this blog you can find some posts from the time I was working on the book. And maybe one day I will write about the making of and the contributers involved.

*Originally I had one page per technique but it got halved and halved further during the process. Understandable. Could be a book on it’s own.

Check out their new website (and order Helvetica forever extensively! :)

read on: my report fresh from Frankfurt book fair from 10/09

To me Helvetica feels to typography a bit like Japanese white rice feels to traditional Japanese cuisine. That is, on its own it may seem pretty bland to most people. [...] Yet, as a balanced complement to all other elements in a washoku meal, rice is truly a delicious and harmonious amplifier of the entire culinary experience. Helvetica is a bit like this in that the typeface is a great complement to other design elements on a page or poster or slide, etc. Helvetica is a great amplifier of clarity without drawing attention to its own form. (source)

The writer might had the different elements of a layout in mind, but the metaphor suits combining typefaces with Helvetica just as adequately (I don’t know about the last point though) (and his other).

What keeps puzzling me: why do I feel like advocate of H since that Helvetica Forever project? Paying attention to mentions like this, keep giving advice, how to use it. I did not even liked H before. Ja, there is a certain compassion …

Da steht es – Helvetica forever – unser zeitlos gediegenes Nachschlagewerk bei Lars Müller Publishers im Regal. Ab November auch in anderen.

Und wo wir gerade bei Helvetica sind. Ich habe im wunderbaren Bornheim in der Nähe der Schönen Müllerin genächtigt. Am ersten Morgen dachte ich noch, ich hätte einen Äppler-Knick in der Optik, aber den hatte wohl vor mir schon einer.

Ich bin inzwischen bei der Neuen Helvetica angekommen und griff etwas skeptisch zu diesem, naja, sagen wir mal – Kind seiner Zeit (1983) …

innen wird es noch arger …

beim Impressum angelangt musste ich aber trotz schlimmer Heiserkeit und Rippenschmerzen laut prusten.

Woraufhin mir Axel gleich dieses schöne Gerät mit dazu schenkte:

Des weiteren Helvetica als ein paar lines-of-type, Handsatzreste in AG und eine Schublade voll Reform-Grotesk.

Bildunterschrift für uns Spätgeborene:
Das »Tablett« ist ein Satzschiff, in das man den fertig gesetzten Text aus dem Winkelhaken legte, bis die Kolumne voll war.
Unten links: Blindmaterial, rechts Regletten als Zeilenabstand zwischen den Bleizeilen, dazwischen ein paar Bleilettern. Auf dem Haufen rechts unten liegt ein Linotype-Keil für den Wortabstand.
In der Mitte rechts aus Messing ein Stapel Linotype-Matrizen, darüber gegossene Zeilen und ganz oben, das ist wohl eine Prägestempelgegenform, keine Ahnung.
Linke mitte: mit Kolumnenschnur zusammengebundener »Stehsatz« (nicht abgelegt, sondern aufgehoben zum späteren wiederverwenden); drüber noch ein Stapel Linotype-Zeilen. Das K ist glaube ich ein Klischee und die gelbe Rolle ist ein Lochstreifen zur Ansteuerung einer Setzmaschine, z.B.Linofilm oder Monotype, aber die waren breiter.

Schöner Abschied von der FH (heute habe ich gekündigt).