An Isotope of Advertising.

The storm churned up by the industrial revolution is something everyone is familiar with, but little do people know how this revolutionary mindset had its implications on the design industry. Along with traditional manufacturing methods, even the serifs in fonts were dropped during the start of the 19^th century. Initially, this was just a form of non – conformity with an ironic capability of symbolizing conformity and order.

With the dashes (serifs) dropped and additional horizontal slashes on the exceptionally distinct e, the sans serif revolution gave birth to something that is quoted to be as ominous as air itself. Helvetica. This typeface was invented in the modest workshop of the Haas foundry, Switzerland. The purpose of this font was to strip a typeface of character and emotion, to create a typeface that instantly absorbs or rather reflects the characteristics of its context. Successfully satisfying these requirements allowed this 59 year old to become to most widely used typeface in the history of mankind.

With the figure ground relationship between the font and the background mastered so well that established designers go as far as describing Helvetica as a typeface that feels like an “icy glass of distilled water offered to a nomad stranded in the hot dusty desert”. This uni-weighted font was not about the black of the font on the white of the paper it was about the white of the paper holding the black of the font together, it was clean, it was crisp, it was smooth, it looked authoritative and it was the only font the corporate logos were boasting ( Staples, MetLife, Greyhound, BMW, Toyota, Sears, Tupperware, Nestle, Lufthansa, Oral –B, Knoll, NASA, American Apparel, target, Verizon, North Face, Jeep).

With every governmental organization and Multi national corporation sending out in –office notices informing employees to start using Helvetica as the new default font, with road signs and public notices now giving directions in Helvetica, it is said that if Helvetica was a person he/she would be easily twice are more influential than all dictators and presidents put together.

Helvetica was the birth child of an specific advertising need. If something so small can conceive something so big that can achieve so much, what is stopping us? After all Helvetica is just a typeface, we are human.

Like the Rome has Romans, these guys below are all Helveticans.

Imagine the royalties, if you were Helvetica.

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