Helvetica’s 50-year anniversary celebrations in 2007 were overwhelming and contagious. We saw the movie. Twice. We bought the shirts and the buttons. We dug out the homage books and re-read the hate articles. We mourned the fading non-color of an old black shirt proudly exclaiming that “HELVETICA IS NOT AN ADOBE FONT”. We took part in long conversations discussing the merits of the Swiss classic, that most sacred of typographic dreamboats, outlasting its builder and tenants to go on alone and saturate the world with the fundamental truth of its perfect logarithm. We swooned again over its subtleties (“Ah, that mermaid of an R!”). We rehashed decades-old debates about “Hakzidenz,” “improvement in mind” and “less is more.” We dutifully cursed every single one of Helvetica’s knockoffs. We breathed deeply and closed our eyes on perfect Shakti Gawain-style visualizations of David Carson hack'n'slashing Arial — using a Swiss Army knife, no less — with all the infernal post-brutality of his creative disturbance and disturbed creativity. We then sailed without hesitation into the absurdities of analyzing Helvetica’s role in globalization and upcoming world blandness (China beware! Helvetica will invade you as silently and transparently as a sheet of rice paper!). And at the end of a perfect celebratory day, we positively affirmed à la Shakti, and solemnly whispered the energy of our affirmation unto the universal mind: “We appreciate Helvetica for getting us this far. We are now ready for release and await the arrival of the next head snatcher.” The great hype of Swisspalooza '07 prompted a look at Max Miedinger, the designer of Neue Haas Grotesk (later renamed to Helvetica). Surprisingly, what little biographical information available about Miedinger indicates that he was a typography consultant and type sales rep for the Haas foundry until 1956, after which time he was a freelance graphic designer — rather than the full-time type designer most Helvetica enthusiasts presume him to have been. It was under that freelance capacity that he was commissioned to design the regular and bold weights of Neue Haas Grotesk typeface. His role in designing Helvetica was never really trumpeted until long after the typeface attained global popularity. And, again surprisingly, Miedinger designed two more typefaces that seem to have been lost to the dust of film type history. One is called Pro Arte (1954), a very condensed Playbill-like slab serif that is similar to many of its genre. The other, made in 1964, is much more interesting. Its original name was Horizontal. Here it is, lest it becomes a Haas-been, presented to you in digital form by Canada Type under the name of its original designer, Miedinger, the Helvetica King. The original film face was a simple set of bold, panoramically wide caps and figures that give off a first impression of being an ultra wide Gothic incarnation of Microgramma. Upon a second look, they are clearly more than that. This face is a quirky, very non-Akzidental take on the vernacular, mostly an exercise in geometric modularity, but also includes some unconventional solutions to typical problems (like thinning the midline strokes across the board to minimize clogging in three-storey forms). This digital version introduces four new weights, ranging from Thin to Medium, alongside the bold original. The Miedinger package comes in all popular font formats, and supports Western, Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish and Celtic/Welsh. A few counter-less alternates are included in the fonts.

Impact As its name suggests, Impact, a bold sans serif, is designed to make an impression on the reader. Obviously a display font, Impact makes use of its thick strokes and blocked style, to catch and hold the eye. Because Impact is so striking, it is best placed in plenty of white space so that it does not overwhelm any accompanying text.

A modern display typeface with ultra sharp detailing. The unique line style takes influence from earlier fonts produced in the 1970’s by Letraset. These lines are then blended with a stronger letterform creating a more visually dynamic font suitable for today’s market. Details include: three unique styles, all caps character set with alternatives, manually edited kerning and Euro symbol.

Moldiv is a sans serif display typeface with geometric appearance. Its clean and angular shapes provide a futuristic and robust design. Moldiv consists of a single weight, an extended European character set, and kerning and symbols were manually edited. It has a timeless style which is great for display purposes, especially for headlines, posters, magazines, book covers, logos, and much more.

A clear and simple sans serif typeface. Straight lines are combined with precision curves to form a functional and versatile font best suited for a wide range of applications. Developed to meet the needs of the professional user, details include 9 weights with italics, 540 characters, 5 variations of numerals, small caps, stylistic alternatives, manually edited kerning and Opentype features.

A ragged jagged experiment that's sure to fit the needs of any mad scientist or extreme skier dude (you know the type). Features two sets of variations: one set on the uppercase keys and a different set on the lowercase keys. Mix and match them for best effect. No twisted or mangled points in this font. All paths guaranteed technically sound.

Pepita is a flexible and easy to use connected script. Pepita has plenty to offer: a selection of 72 ornaments and plenty of ligatures and alternate characters: try turning on Contextual Alternates, Swash or Stylistic Alternates in any Opentype savvy program or manually choose the characters from the glyph palette. For best results combine all 3 weights of the font.

A simple, mechanical typeface without distractions. Slightly condensed curves are developed from a compact grid layout to produce a crisp, fresh and legible type family. The unadorned letterforms work perfectly with complex information-based applications such as user interfaces, mobile devices and websites. Details include six weights with italics, 480 characters, five variations of numerals, stylistic alternatives, manually edited kerning and Opentype features.

A 1766 specimen by Isaac Moore, former manager of Joseph Fry’s foundry in Bristol, England, shows many types inspired by John Baskerville’s. But a century later, standardization had foisted inept lining figures and shortened descenders upon these designs. Matthew Carter remedies the tragedy with Big Moore, restoring oldstyle figures, full-length descenders, and historic swashes to this regal serif in two styles.

This handy family takes its design cues from Beton, a slab serif designed by Heinrich Jost for Bauersche Gießerei in 1931. A number of characters have been softened by the addition of ball terminals, commonly seen on manual typewriter type in the 1950s. Both versions of this font contain the complete Latin A Extended character set, as well as extended ligatures and fractions.

Morover is a lively display Fraktur, which manages to combine legibility with hand-drawn charm. All letterforms are carefully hand constructed to bring great legibility and clarity to the family of two faces-ideal for seasonal or festive work, or anywhere that vintage charm is required. The regular face offers an elaboately incised decorative design; the plain face offers solid black letterforms.

La Paz is a typeface created to emulate handwriting. It consists of three different alphabets which are interleaved to provide variations in height, weight and inclination, typical of handwriting. In addition it has tens of ligatures, ornaments and opentype programming that help to recreate human gestures. It's ideal for use in small sizes for designs with a warm imprint and with manual gestures.

Zanderley was inspired by a small, almost random sample from a turn-of-the-last- century calligrapher’s instructional manual. It’s a bit Roman, mixed with a little blackletter and a lot of random decorative fun.The family consists of two typefaces- Zanderley regular is a heavy, friendly an d fun display face. They are well complimented by Zanderley initials. Try them out soon!

It is inspired by mandalic structures. Its visual language is based on misregister and flaws in textiles printed by serigraph technique in the ’70s. This typeface allows you to combine two characters (front/uppercase; back/lowercase) into a single one to create print repeat patterns. This way you can get many different combinations. Printa is ideal for those who seek handmade designs.

Artegra Soft is the round cornered addition to the Artegra superfamily. It's based on the perfectionist geometric forms of Artegra Sans, all the glyphs are softened with round corners with manual corrections to the soft edges. The family has 54 fonts in condensed, normal and extended widths, 9 weights per width with matching true italics to achieve the upmost versatility.

A compact sans serif with a technical origin. Each character was drafted out from a grid template and then refined through the application of subtle curved detailing. The result is a precise, contemporary typeface best suited to identity, mobile and video game development. Details include 9 weights with italics, 500 characters, 5 variations of numerals, stylistic alternatives, manually edited kerning and Opentype features.

This project started from an idea to create a fun & informal typeface that would be cool for designers and for the general public. So, Just in Type designed a font with several OpenType features to create different letterings for different occasions, always in a cute way, sometimes even fancy. Have a look at the Sapeca Manual in the Gallery Menu.

Inspired by the work of famed Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti, the German designer Thomas Finke created Bergell, a lively and natural script face. Bergell's calligraphic style is both dynamic and elegant, like the kind of special, festive handwriting many desire, but few ever manage to achieve. Why spend so much time at your drawing table when there are great fonts like this one?

Type books and lettering manuals of the 1900s were resplendent with examples of chamfered type faces, as this was a popular and simple style of lettering that was easy to reproduce with little effort. Poster Chamfer JNL is one such example taken from one of these turn-of-the-century publications that exemplifies the style as a condensed version of the letters.

From original samples of Rudolf Koch's Maximilian, Gothicus and Gothicus Alternate have Fraktur style captials, Gothicus Roman has Roman capitals. All three have the same lower case which includes three swash characters for g, s and t, available as discretionary ligatures in OpenType versions, and manually otherwise. All include two authentic ornaments, also penned by Koch. Gothicus Roman has three additional floret ornaments.