Helvetica
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Helvetica, also known by its original name Neue Haas Grotesk, is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.
A 1969 poster by Robert Geisser exemplifying the "Swiss" style of the 1950s and 60s: solid red colour, simple images, and neo-grotesque sans-serif type, all in lowercase. This design appears to use Helvetica or a close imitation.
An early Helvetica specimen in the asymmetric Swiss modernist style, showing tight spacing in the poster style of the period
A hand-cut rubylith master used in the 1983 phototypesetting release of Neue Helvetica
A Helvetica Flair specimen sheet
Akzidenz-Grotesk
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Akzidenz-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family originally released by the Berthold Type Foundry of Berlin in 1898. The German Akzidenz indicates its intended use as a typeface for commercial print r
Helvetica
…typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th-century (1890s) typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk and other German and Swiss designs. Its use became a hallmark of the International Typographic Style that emerged from the work of Swiss designers in…
Akzidenz-Grotesk seems to be a derivative of this shadowed sans-serif (Schattierte Grotesk, detail below) released by the Bauer & Co. foundry of Stuttgart in 1896, the year before it was taken over by Berthold.
A 1905 advertisement for Berthold in a Swedish printing journal, offering Royal-Grotesk, later branded as the light weight of Akzidenz-Grotesk, for sale. The sans-serif type is used in a secondary role underneath a more decorative heading face.
Font designer Dan Reynolds (above) and graphic design professor Indra Kupferschmid (below) have documented many aspects of the early history of Akzidenz-Grotesk.
A German banknote from 1918, using a range of sans-serifs of the period