It has now been 50 years since Helvetica was introduced. Even if you’ve never heard its name before, you would be bound to recognize the typeface, because you’ll have seen it so often without knowing. We live in such a bloated visual culture that a typical Western consumer is said to see - as opposed to actually notice - more than 3,000 corporate messages every day, and many of them are printed in Helvetica.

Helvetica plays such an important part in our lives that the Museum of Modern Art in New York is celebrating its 50th anniversary by acquiring a set of the original lead type, making it the first typeface to become part of the museum’s collection. MoMA is also opening a “50 Years of Helvetica” exhibition on Friday. And Helvetica is the subject of a feature documentary, which premiered last month at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas. Read more

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 8:56 am and is filed under All, Famous Fonts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.