 Trade In this Item for up to £7.50
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Helvetica Forever: Story of a Typeface for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £7.50, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Product Description
Review
This is the perfect book for design obsessives. --Wallpaper
'Helvetica Forever' should be found on the bookshelf of every designer. --Page
'Helvetica Forever' should be found on the bookshelf of every designer. --Page
Product Description
Designed in 1957, the Helvetica font is an icon of Swiss graphic design, which was a model of sober, functional communication throughout the world in the 1950s and 60s. The balanced and neutral appearance of Helvetica forgoes a high degree of expressivity a " a quality for which it is both criticized and admired. This polarization has helped to gain it unparalleled notoriety. Helvetica is far and away the most widely used of all typefaces; according to a survey by the Berliner Fontshop-Archiv, it tops the list of the hundred best fonts of all time. This publication retraces Helveticaa (TM)s fifty-year history, compares it to the well-known sans serif fonts of the twentieth century, and examines the phenomenon of its unparalleled spread. Numerous illustrations show a multitude of ways the font has been used in five decades from a wide variety of fields a " from signal design to party flyers.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
This book covers everything you could possibly imaging about a typeface which has defined Swiss typography for over 50 years, and then some.
A must have for all Helvetica fans and indeed lovers of Swiss type in general. And the feel of the book is fantastic, a woven cover with heat treated vinyl lettering.
A must have for all Helvetica fans and indeed lovers of Swiss type in general. And the feel of the book is fantastic, a woven cover with heat treated vinyl lettering.
Who would have thought that the development of the world's favourite 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 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 (using the type founders favourite sample setting word: Hamburger). A real find and reproduced in colour 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 there were only 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 'Helveticise' 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.
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 (using the type founders favourite sample setting word: Hamburger). A real find and reproduced in colour 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 there were only 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 'Helveticise' 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.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
The Hamburgers of Helvetica
13 Nov 2009
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.
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.
Was this review helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Art, Architecture & Photography > Architecture > Techniques & Tools > Drafting
- Books > Art, Architecture & Photography > Architecture > Techniques & Tools > Structure & Design
- Books > Art, Architecture & Photography > Graphic Arts > Typography
- Books > Art, Architecture & Photography > Painting & Drawing
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
