Helvetica Alternative

Helvetica is one of, if not the most well-known sans serif typeface in the world. Designed in Switzerland over half a century ago, it has spawned numerous variants and updates. Some of the most well known one including Helvetica Neue (German for: New), as well as the recently released Helvetica Now.

Not so many knows that Helvetica was originally named Neue Haas Grotesk, which roughly translated as New Haas Grotesque typeface (Haas, being the original type foundry of the said typeface). However the name was later changed by Stempel, the parent company of Haas Type Foundry to Helvetica, derived from the Latin name of Swiss, Helvetia.

Helvetica popularity has made it the to-go typeface for designers, it has a clean, simple and modernist look to it. Helvetica works great in large body of text with its highly readability, as well as in short text where it communicates a bold and stylish without overbearing message.

That is also one of the reason why Set logo looks very much appealing, clean and simple, yet bold at the same time.

Currently, there are numerous typefaces that are inspired by Helvetica, and today we are going to look at other alternative typeface that may be directly influenced, related, or although different but have a similar look and feel to Helvetica. These typefaces are my personal preferences as an alternative to Helvetica, hence the title of this post.

Neue Haas Grotesk

Yes, the typeface with the same name with the original name of Helvetica. This typeface was designed to present Helvetica in its truest form on digital format. As Helvetica was originally designed as a hand-set letter for print, it couldn’t be properly digitized due to the limitation of the computer technology in the early 80s, therefore in 2010 Neue Haas Grotesk was released by Linotype and designed by Christian Swartz.

The design is based on original print typeface of Helvetica, carefully redrawn in digital format to faithfully replicate the original analog design. Unlike the one-size-fits all solution of the previous Helvetica digitization, Neue Haas Grotesk are created with two optical sizes for body text and display sizes. It has slightly taller x-height, corrected the oblique from original Helvetica that was simply skewed into a true italic font with smoother curvature; having stylistic alternatives for several fonts such as R with straight tail rather than curve; refined the spacing and many other corrections and additions to make it a great alternative to Helvetica for your design.

For Adobe Creative Cloud subscriber, Neue Haas Grotesk typeface is available in Adobe Fonts for free.

Lab Grotesque

Produced by Letters from Sweden type foundry, Lab Grotesque for me personally is a more broad shouldered and macho cousin of Helvetica, it looks wider and studier compared to Helvetica in general. It has a simpler and cleaner curve than Helvetica (for example, as seen in the letter a) or sometimes even clearly straight (for example, as seen in the letter R).

The typeface comes in six weights, with true italics rather than oblique, and its character sets also support other letters such as Crylic and Greek alphabets.

The downside of this beautiful typeface is with its licensing, its license may be purchased form Letters from Sweden website with limitations of numbers of use, instead of single purchase that allows the font to be used indefinitely.

Suisse Int’l

My current favorite of the bunch, Suisse International (French for Swiss) from Swiss Typefaces type foundry perhaps for me is the most sexiest while it retains the charm of Helvetica without being overbearing like Lab Grotesque due to its tight spacing.

The typeface set flush-left and designed with grid based layout that are derived from the content, ensuring great readability for large body of text, as well as stylish look for short text, just like Helvetica itself. Suisse Int’l is available in extensive collection of 9 weights, each with italics.

Finally the cherry on the top, Suisse Int’l licensing is an absolute joy, it could be purchased from Swiss Typeface website either separately for each font family or as a bundle with discounted price, all with a one-time purchase license that you can use indefinitely. Moreover, they also allow you to download the complete set of typeface as a sample specimen to try it yourself first before you decided to purchase it. It’s no wonder why loving this typeface is so easy.



＊originally posted on: http://blog.setinc.jp/archives/230