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.

Linoset was created from cut and printed linoleum. The lettering is based on Helvetica Neue Condensed Bold – it has been cut, printed and re-drawn to take on a completely new life – it's rough, tough and downright nasty!

The initial idea of timesquare typeface inspired by Helvetica when presenting the board information on a subway escalator in Time Square, Manhattan, New York. This confirms strength the legend of Helvetica is not lost amid rampant nice fonts in the site. Therefore it should not appropriate that this timesquare fonts come to rival the greatness of Helvetica. Fonts timesquare thrive (since 2008 for self used) of the basic forms of Helvetica to timesquare born in different shapes and sizes. The greatest challenge during development timesquare is both shape similarity to Helvetica directly, as well as to other fonts inspired by Helvetica. Timesquare's main characteristics are the wide character, modern touch and individually, can work well on a wide variety of applications in books, brochures and magazines as well as applications in advertising. This typeface has been developed on the Latin character sets. Hopefully useful.

New York to London via Europe The hardworking FS Koopman is a crossbred workhorse which draws inspiration from Swiss and Germanic grotesks, American gothics and early British grotesques, but refuses to fit neatly into any of these categories. Its neither one nor the other, but all of the above. Fontsmith designers Andy Lethbridge and Stuart de Rozario decided to take the characteristics they admired from each category and distill them down into one functional family. Neo meets Neue FS Koopman aims to swim against the tide of Helvetica-ish derivatives by bringing some personality and soul to a genre that all too often ends up feeling bland and sterile. FS Koopman subtly embraces the quirkiness and charm often seen in early twentieth century designs but pairs this with the functionality of later pioneers of the genre. It’s a grotesque isn’t it? The term grotesque surfaced around the early 1800s and refers to the early sans serif designs that many initially believed were strange or ‘grotesque’ due to their lack of elegant serifs. Later variations became known as neo-grotesques and this moniker stuck around even after they gained mass popularity. Some American variants became known as gothics. FS Koopman takes cues from all three categories and blends them into one cohesive design.

Folio was designed by Konrad F. Bauer and Walter Baum and appeared with the Bauer font foundry (Bauersche Gießerei) in 1957. The designers based their ideas on Helvetica but Folio did not turn out to pose the competition they had hoped. The font has the same applications as Helvetica and is an extremely legible font. Folio is particularly good for text and has an objective, neutral character.

This font was actually designed by trying to teach my helper-monkey, Philip, to cut Helvetica out of a piece of cardboard.

Wilton's "Benjamin-Regular" is a delightful twist on a classic - reminiscent of Franklin Gothic, Helvetica and Frutiger with it's own contemporary twist.

Squarish could have been the Universe or Helvetica of the 1980's, if only it was designed then. Now it is just a little quirky gridded typeface.

Univers and Helvetica Compressed are most often used for movie posters, but they lack variants. Therefore I made a compressed family with seven weights for more versatility.

TD Beta is a bold and light sans serif typeface inspired by Futura and Helvetica. It is best used for headlines, titles, display, and even long paragraphs on digital collaterals.

Undercoat offers a gritty twist on a classic font style (Helvetica). It was completely hand painted which makes the font an organic centerpiece to any of your grungy design applications.

CG Triumvirate was designed for use on the Compugraphic phototypesetting system. The CG Triumvirate font family is very similar to Helvetica, and is an ideal font choice for text and display use.

Aura was designed by Jackson Burke for the Linotype foundry in 1960. Aura is a sans serif display font, very similar to Helvetica Inserat. Use the Aura font for headlines and posters.

A next generation gothic with that clean legible corporate look, very simple yet very dignified. Great for text and head lines, just about any application. If you are tired of seeing Helvetica try Paladium Gothic.

Franca is a neo-grotesk family in nine weights plus matching italics. The inspiration for the design came through the constant interest in new interpretations of the classic grotesk model and a study of "neutral“ typefaces like Helvetica, Univers or Normal Grotesk. During the studies, additional attention was given to the American representatives of the genre, resulting in the initial impetus for a reinterpretation, combining both paths into one contemporary design. This is reflected in the name, blending together the names of the most popular typefaces of each genres, (Fran)klin and Helveti(ca). Due to its large x-height and plain design, the family is perfectly suited for all kinds of text. Its mid-weights are optimized for usage in long paragraphs, while the bolder weights, due to a short descender and ascender, create a compact and confident look in headlines or short copy. In order to create strong and dynamic italics, the oblique glyph shapes come with a faint calligraphic hint, defined by a higher stroke contrast and a steeper connection between stems and arcs in, for example, h n m and u. This is followed by different standard shapes for a and y, supporting the dynamic movement of the lowercase in general. A wide range of OpenType features such as ligatures, old style figures, fractions, case-sensitive shapes and many more, are available for professional and contemporary typesetting. This is completed with eleven alternative glyph sets, enabling a quick customization of the typeface. The family supports up to 92 languages and comes with 500+ glyphs per font.

Roman Sehrer, a seasoned German advertising professional, digitized his handwriting to create this family of three fonts. Sehrer recommends this family for posters, logos, and restaurant menus. It works well with traditional sans serifs such as Helvetica or Univers.

Geoffrey Lee designed Impact font for the Stephenson Blake foundry in 1965. The sans serif display typeface is very heavy and condensed in the grotesque style, similar to Helvetica Inserat. Use Impact font in display situations requiring a strong statement.

Geoffrey Lee designed Impact font for the Stephenson Blake foundry in 1965. The sans serif display typeface is very heavy and condensed in the grotesque style, similar to Helvetica Inserat. Use Impact font in display situations requiring a strong statement.

Heldustry is a sans serif design with letterforms partway between Helvetica and Eurostile. The Heldustry font family has a large x-height and wide characters, making it ideal for situations where there is not much copy but pages must be filled.

Albany, from Monotype Imaging, is a typeface family whose fonts have the same metrics as Arial. However, in contrast to Arial or Helvetica, Albany's letterforms are more open, with more generous apertures and counters. Also, punctuation is not square, as in Arial, but round

Xero is an intentionally loose creation of a humanist font, given a Russian flair! Played rougher than its counterparts Helvetica and Arial, Xero works well for those who want to go that route but don't want the sharply defined lines of others in the humanist family.

Bitmax is the work of British designer Alan Birch, who was inspired by the look of fax transmissions. He took Helvetica medium and used controlled distortions to create this commanding, high-tech style. Bitmax is best used in large display sizes for a limited number of words.

Fonce Sans Pro is a mono-weight, Swiss-style typeface with influences from great typefaces like Din, Helvetica, Interstate, and Trade Gothic. Its form is unique and sophisticated with an unmistakable Dutch style. It’s subtle and enjoyable, and works beautifully in both display and body copy.

A modern neo-grotesque typeface. Having grown up in Sheffield and been completely immersed in the work of The Designers Republic I became very drawn to their treatment of Helvetica, especially the close tracking of the letter space. This visual investigation led me to the study of the font Hass Unica, a so called improvement to Helvetica. In order not to replicate and become a clone of Unica I redrew all the characters from scratch improving optical appearance, developing subtle corrections and reshaping individual letterforms. The result is a remixed neo-grotesque font that has strong general optical balance with great rhythm under close tracking. Details include 10 weights, an extended European character set, true italic, manually edited kerning and Euro symbol.

Pedell ist eine neue Schreibschrift, die das Schreiben mit Kreide simuliert. Ein Font mit eben diesem ‚Kreidecharakter’ fehlte bisher noch in der profonts Library. Also wurde der Schriftdesigner Ralph M. Unger beauftragt, eine Kreideschrift zu schreiben und zu digitalisieren. Pedell ist eine gut lesbare, lebendige und nicht kindische Handschrift, die nicht nur für schulische Zwecke hervorragend einsetzbar ist.

Helovatica is a sans serif font with modern, corporate, elegant, unique and classy-look. This font crafted specials for logo design projects, ready to use on Logo, Branding, Magazine, Social Media, and Many more that needs modern touches. Helovatica is also included full set of: uppercase and lowercase letters multilingual characters numerals punctuation Wish you enjoy our font. :)

A simple and elegant sans serif font inspired by the legendary Helvetica and Univers. Perfect for minimalist, modern typography. The font has a dense enough kerning that it's perfect for large and medium-sized headlines. The highlight of the font is the letters N and K, adding some spacey vibe to the design.

Toffee Display is a sans serif project inspired on Gill sans, Helvetica and Eurotstile italics. This project is designed for food packaging, candies, commercial, and fast food. I recommend combining it with a light and calligraphy font to get absolute contrast. That is it, Thanks for buy it and work with it!

This forerunner of Helvetica made its debut as Breite Grotesk in the 1886 specimen book of the Schelter & Giesecke foundry in Leipzig. This classic face still retains its freshness, even after more than a century. Both versions of this font contain the complete Latin A Extended character set, as well as extended ligatures and fractions.

BR Sonoma is a new geometric grotesque built for the 21st century with a finely tuned modern aesthetic. BR Sonoma builds on the foundations laid by the classic Swiss grotesques such as Helvetica and Univers but combines their features with a stronger geometric base usually found in other early classics such as Avant Garde, Futura and Avenir.

Deka was 10 years in the making. Intended as a clean and straightforward sans serif family, it has just enough personality to stand out. Helvetica this ain't! Deka has 8 weights, language support for all Latin plus cyrillic languages, and loads of Opentype features. It is a versatile workhorse suitable for both text and display usage.

MGN Ismawan. This font was created in 2022 and was inspired by the Helvetica font. With a standard shape and being a bit wide, this font is suitable for writing, but for headlines, we think it's still OK. There are several forms of this font that have a distinctive character, which makes this font suitable for logo writing.

Arial is one of the most widely used designs of the last 30 years. Drawn in 1982 by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders for use in an early IBM® laser printer, Arial has become a staple for textual content. While it is widely believed that Arial's design was based on Helvetica, it is more accurate to consider Monotype Grotesque as its ancestor.

Duplay is a sans-serif designed and developed by darman kadir in this late 2023, influenced by famous Swiss-style typefaces like Helvetica and others. This sans-serif typeface will become an alternative solution to enhance your sports and apparel presence. It has a solid and fast appearance, harder in certain font families, and stronger characteristics that will make your image more prominent.

BRIGNELL SQUARE is a ten font family designed by Ian Brignell. Modern and crisp, this strong-shouldered sans serif offers tonal neutrality. Like Helvetica, Brignell Square is a classic "do anything" font. Spatial balance defines these letter shapes. Creatively, this typeface was born in 1990 out of Ian’s frustration with ubiquitous, barely readable highway signage. Use everywhere. Extended Latin set.

In seeking a strong, utilitarian gothic alternative for Helvetica, we're left with few options for unobtrusive functionalism. As such, we decided to create the Citarella Gothic family. The ligatures are characteristic of the signage and architecture around Sarno, where the Citarella family originates. The sweeping arcs, broad counters, and clean swashes allow for the architectural design to be imbued with the warmth and humanity of its namesake.