I am a 3rd year Graphic Design student form The University of Wales
Newport. Last summer I did a short work placement in Zürich and had
the opportunity to play with some lead type. As it was the 50th
birthday of Helvetica and I was in its home country I thought it would
be only fair to celebrate it, so I designed and printed this poster to
illustrate a small but important change in the typefaces development.

I am a huge fan of Helvetica and Swiss design and felt so lucky to be
spending time in Zürich on the 50th anniversary of the typeface. The
studio I was working in had a letterpress and a nice collection of
lead type. I had originally planned to print some business cards in
Helvetica as a souvenir of the trip and to get the chance to
experiment with the lead type and press. I enjoyed it so much I had to
do something else, so I moved on to compliment slips, again in
Helvetica. I finished those and had another browse through the draws
of type, I was so excited when I found they had both Haas Grotesk and
Helvetica in the same point size, big enough to do an A3 poster. As
I’m sure you know Helvetica was originally named Haas Grotesk and then
was renamed in 1960 to Helvetica to increase sales in the United
States. The Stempel type foundry suggested Helvetia, Latin for
Switzerland, but Eduard Hoffmann said you can’t name a typeface after
a country and suggested Helvetica.

The poster illustrates this development of the typeface. The fact that
there is little or no difference in the letter forms themselves makes
you wonder if it was the change in name that made the typeface the
success it is today. I really wanted to record these two typefaces on
the same piece of paper as a lot of lead type is being destroyed and
it may well of been my last chance to document these original pieces
of type. There were a few different designs but I wanted to display
the letters like a specimen sheet. The random letters (afPQRS5) at the
bottom are just a some of my favorites from Helvetica, and some that
didn’t make it into the top line up.

I did print the poster using letterpress. And it took so much longer
than I had first expected to set the type. But it was so enjoyable,
and it makes you think in a different way. I wanted to express the
beauty of the typeface in the design. At uni I love working with wood
type and screen printing so it was really good to do some letterpress
as well.