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Max Miedinger
Swiss designer, born and died in Zürich, 1910-1980. His typefaces, all produced for the Haas Foundry in Basel, Switzerland: - Pro Arte (1954), a very condensed Playbill-like slab serif that is similar to many of its genre.
- Helvetica (1956/57), Helvetica Rounded (1956/57). Helvetica was in fact first called Neue Haas Grotesk, and was only named Helvetica in 1960 by Stempel AG, because it wanted to appeal to an international market. Erik Spiekermann says that it was coined by a Stempel salesman, Heinz Eul, although credit for the invention of the name later went to Eul's boss, Schultz-Anker, the managing director of Stempel. Linotype published Neue Helvetica in 1983, with weights denoted by two digits, ab, where a goes from 2 to 9 (ultra light to black), and b from 3 to 7 (extended to condensed)---example: 75 is Bold Regular. A total of 51 weights were produced in 1983.
The Bitstream version of Helvetica is called Swiss 721. See also "Sans" and "Hegel" on the SoftMaker MegaFont XXL CD, 2002. URW's version of Helvetica, free with the Ghostscript font package, is Nimbus Sans (1987). Most famous for Meta, Spiekermann is quoted as saying: Neue Haas Grotesk was a redesign of (surprise!) Haas Grotesk, which in turn was partly based on Scheltersche Grotesk from Schelter&Giesecke in those days, type was also quickly assimilated, copied, emulated, ripped-off; the success of Akzidenz Grotesk had alerted Haas to the fact that they were missing sales because all the Swiss designers were specifying AG from Germany. People are always reminded that Miedinger was in fact a salesman, not a true type designer. Nick Shinn: Here is a document showing the working process of plagiarizing Akzidenz Grotesk that Miedinger oversaw. - Horizontal (1964). Digitally revived in 2007 by Patrick Griffin (Canada Type) as Miedinger. Canada Type writes: The original film typeface was a simple set of bold, panoramically wide caps and figures that give off a first impression of being an ultra wide Gothic incarnation of Microgramma. Upon a second look, they are clearly more than that. This typeface is a quirky, very non-Akzidental take on the vernacular, mostly an exercise in geometric modularity, but also includes some unconventional solutions to typical problems (like thinning the midline strokes across the board to minimize clogging in three-storey forms). This digital version introduces a new lighter weight alongside the bold original.
Biography by Nicholas Fabian. Linotype link. FontShop link. Klingspor link.
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Max Miedinger
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