Sans-Serif Fonts

The Swiss style is well known for its preference of sans-serif fonts adopted because of the clean lines, functionality and legibility. After the second world war the Swiss designers moved away from the typefaces used with the Russian constructivist and Bauhaus movements perhaps because of the political connotations that had become associated with them durin the war. Instead they began to use more nuetral typefaces with no political identity much akin to the nuetrality of Switzerland as a country.

Akzidenz Grotesk

The font was released in 1896 by H. Berthold AG type foundry. The typeface shares many similarities to the later Helvetica and Univers however Akzidenz Grotesk had more rounded characters. A project undertook by Gunter Gerhard Lange at Berthold to widen the fonts family produced both condensed and extended wieghts named standard, whilst wanting to expand the range of this font he also wanted to remain true to the original by leaving any imperfections unaltered.

Helvetica

Helvetica was deisgn by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffman in 1957. The Haas Typefoundry wanted to create a typeface that would rival Akzid3enz Grotesk in Switzerland. The design was based on that of Akzidenz and was originally released under the title of Neue Haas Grotesk. They wanted to create a font that would be clear and functional that could be used on signage. 1960 saw the font renamed to Helvetica which is Latin for Switzerland. In 1982 a new typeface Arial was released and the similarities between the two are many. Arial was chosen by Microsoft to be the default font on its PCs making people ever more familiar to the imposter. Helvetica rose in popularity along with the Swiss style and is still used today however as its popularity grew some designers began to shun it because of its overuse.