Indeed, over the past few years, we’ve seen Google, Apple, Airbnb, and even Coca-Cola all develop their own typefaces–most of which are spiritually similar to Helvetica–for a world in which text needs to scale from tiny to giant without breaking a sweat. It’s a typeface Apple actually used in iOS and MacOS for a brief period before it created its own San Francisco typeface that has since taken over its platforms. Most notably, it would be digitized in 1983 as Neue Helvetica. Monotoype would refine Neue Helvetica (aka Helvetica Neue) as our digital tools evolved and the needs of displaying text did alongside them. It’s gone through several iterations over the years. Helvetica Now isn’t the typeface’s first major update. It is considered the most widely-spread font in the Western world. The trifecta of micro, display, and text really do feel like they cover everything. Try as I might, I couldn’t break the font. Cloud subscriber, they do have a typeface library online from which you can download many free fonts. Playing with all of these options on Monotype’s own demo site, cranking up and down the sizes and weights, the typeface feels less like the buttoned up Helvetica you know–which often doesn’t look as wonderful on the screen as you might imagine it in your head–and more like the typographical equivalent of a self-healing cutting board. Helvetica is a licensed font, if Im not mistaken. On top of that, Now features a slew of different weights from very thin to quite bold. “Helvetica Now Micro solves the decades-old spacing and legibility shortcomings” of Helvetica, by splitting the single typeface into three, says Charles Nix, type director at Monotype.
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