Monday, October 10, 2011

phobia. I think i just found out that I have "swipephobia"










Asymmetriphobia- fear of non-symmetrical forms and clusters. argh!! Some swipes. Alphabet that I drew based on a non-symmetrical grid of circles.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Helvetica 1957

Helvetica was developed in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann at the Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas type foundry) ofMünchensteinSwitzerland. Haas set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with the successful Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, its design was based on Schelter-Grotesk and Haas’ Normal Grotesk. The aim of the new design was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage.
When Linotype adopted Neue Haas Grotesk (which was never planned to be a full range of mechanical and hot-metal typefaces) its design was reworked. After the success of Univers, Arthur Ritzel of Stempel redesigned Neue Haas Grotesk into a larger family.
In 1960, the typeface's name was changed by Haas' German parent company Stempel to Helvetica (derived from Confoederatio Helvetica, the Latin name for Switzerland) in order to make it more marketable internationally. It was initially suggested that the type be called 'Helvetia' which is the original Latin name for Switzerland. This was ignored by Eduard Hoffmann as he decided it wouldn't be appropriate to name a type after a country. He then decided on 'Helvetica' as this meant 'Swiss' as opposed to 'Switzerland'.

Eurostile 1962

The Eurostile type font style is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Aldo Novarese in 1962. Novarese originally made Eurostile for one of the best-known Italian foundriesNebiolo, in Turin.

Novarese developed Eurostile because although the similar Microgramma, which he had also designed, came with a variety of weights, it had only upper-case letters. A decade after he had designed Microgramma, Novarese remedied this flaw with his design of Eurostile, which added lower-case letters, a bold condensed variant, and an ultra narrow design he called Eurostile Compact, for a total of seven fonts.