Tech Brew Ride Home - Helvetica® Now With Monotype's Charles Nix

Episode Date: May 27, 2019

Nerds and tech folk have always had a special fascination with typeface and font design, and especially with the venerable Helvetica. Today we're going to talk to Charles Nix, who's foundry Monotype had the challenge of updating Helvetica for the 21st century with Helvetica Now. A lot of these bonus episodes are you learning along with me as we take deeper dives into certain tech topics, well no more so than this episode because I knew absolutely nothing about this area of design and so was fascinated to learn about what goes into creating a typeface from an artistic, design, and even business perspective. Sponsors: HappyCog.com/ride Mealime This is what the Helvetica Now looks like. This is the ad-free premium feed! Subscribe now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme Ride Home for Monday, May 27th, 2019. I'm Brian McCullough. Hope those of you that have one are enjoying your long weekend. As promised, here's a sort of special bonus episode of the TechMeme Right Home.

Nerds and Tech Folk have always had a special fascination with typeface and font design, and especially with the venerable Helvetica. Today we're going to talk to Charles Nix, whose foundry, monotype. had the challenge of updating Helvetica for the 21st century with Helvetica now. A lot of these bonus episodes are you learning along with me as we take deeper dives into certain tech topics? Well, look, no more so than this episode because I knew absolutely nothing about this area of design going into it. So I was fascinated to learn about what goes into creating a typeface from an artistic design and even business perspective. And if you want to

see for yourself what we're talking about here. Hit up the link at the bottom of the show notes to see what Helvetica now looks like. So as I sort of said off air, you know, I feel like type is some sort of weird hobby or obsession for tech folk. And I'm no different. I, you know, I've seen the Helvetica documentary and things like that. And I feel like Helvetica is the most famous font in the world. But at the same time, I don't really know anything about anything. and maybe some people listening don't as well. So could we just start by you giving us maybe a little history and background on where Helvetica came from and how it became so ubiquitous in the world?

So if you really want a nerd out, then this is exactly where we need to begin. Please do. The nerdiest of nerds talking about the nerdiest of topics. So Helvetica is the sort of the end product of an evolution of San Seraf. typefaces and those are typefaces without feet. So the first 300 years of typography from the middle of the 1400s to the middle of the 1900s was all about type with seraphs on it. At the end of the 19th century, experiments in sans seraph typefaces began in earnest. There were like little offshoot all along the 19th century way, but at the end of the 19th century, people

started to take them seriously as a possibility for advertising generally. And they were called grotesques at the time, which, I mean, the origin of that word in describing sans-serifes is a little bit long and storied and probably beyond the kind of what we're going to talk about here. So suffice it to say, at the end of the 19th century, these Sans-Sarraf typefaces started to develop, but one in particular, a family that sort of evolved over the first 50 years of the 20th century, was accidents grotesque. And because it was based on the sort of 19th century idea of what skeletal forms for letters should look like, it had some idiosyncrasies to it.

And so two designers, actually one designer and one type director at a small foundry in Switzerland called Haas, came up with this idea of creating a new grotesque, a typeface that sort of ironed out a lot of the idiosyncrasies of the earlier sans-serraves, like accidents grotesque. Typeface was called Noia Haas Grotesque. They named it after their foundry, and it was a typeface from their foundry, so they called it Noia Ha's grotesque.

And it was available for hand type-setting, so one character at a time. And this was in 1957. They knew, though, that if they wanted it to really take off, that they had to partner with a machine-type-setting company. So up north in Germany, there was a company called Stemple, which manufactured typeases for the liner-type machine, which was the leading heavy-duty industrial typesetting machine of the time.

So they partnered with Stemple to create a machine version of Noia Haas Grotesque. And Stemple said, that's fine, we want to do this, but we need to change the name to something that sort of indicates where it's coming from is a little more salesy. So they named it Helvetica or renamed it Helvetica. And for the first two years of that partnership, both names were used interchangeable. but eventually Helvetica became the name of the typeface. And it refers specifically to Switzerland. Right, the old Latin name. The Swiss, essentially.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. So that was the beginning of the beginning. But the transition from hand-setting to machine setting meant that they had to change the typeface slightly. So change the set width of the characters, the space on either side of the characters, and also in some case, the width of some characters in order to make it work in that machine environment. And so began the sort of discrepancy

between Noia Haas-Krotest and Helvetica. So nonetheless, Helvetica became an incredibly popular typeface over the next 30 to 35 years. It managed to make its way into every new type technology. So as we segueed from metal type setting into phototype setting and then eventually phototype setting into digital type setting, Helvetica was always there, incredibly popular and incredibly useful and ubiquitous. So that popularity sort of was about to get supercharged. In 1982, slightly before 1982, when PostScript was beginning to be used to describe pages and to be to describe graphic shapes, Helvetica was re-designed for use in PostScript and christened Noia Helvetica. A major breakthrough because you know what was right around the

corner from 1982 and it was that Helvetica would be on every computer and every printer that shipped for the next 30 years. And that made it not only popular with designers and printers, but popular with everyone, because we all suddenly had access to Helvetica. Well, and I would say for our purposes, really especially popular with technology companies. Yeah, it was, they needed a sans-serif. Helvetica was the sans-serif. And so it became just insanely popular, but that transitioned from early digital into PostScript was it was rudimentary.

And one of the things we did with Helvetica now, which I'll sort of get into, was fix one of the problems that developed at that juncture. The main problem is I see it as highly nerdy. But the main problem as I see it in that transition is that the digitization that took place in 1982 was done from one master drawing. And that master drawing was for a type that was meant to be used at 12 point, 10 to 12 point.

So text sizes. So when you blow it up, it looks like a type for text that's been blown up. And when you shrink it down, it looks like a type for text that's been shrunk down. So it carries the sort of, I mean, subtle, the distinction between those three sort of ranges of type. But they were something that was really inherent in the typeface at the very. beginning when it was in metal, but that got stripped out of it as it turned digital. Well, we've reintroduced that. Yes, actually, before we get into this proper, let me circle back real quick.

So you're with a foundry called Monotype, which is like 120 years old or something like that? Yeah, the origins of Monotype are in the 19th century. Wow. So yeah, we're a descendant of that tradition. And those were two competing technologies. technologies, linotype and monotype in the 19th century. But in terms of digital, we are both monotype and linotype, but under the monotype moniker. Well, as you've already... Sorry, that's a little convoluted.

No, no, no, no. This is what I'm looking for. But as... So, I... Just laying that groundwork, as you've already mentioned, you guys recently released Helvetica now, so a new version of Helvetica. and you've already talked about why you thought it needed to be redesigned. But first, like, is that, is there a little bit of hubris there to, like, okay, now it's time to update the most popular font in the world and were the people to do it? Like, how did you guys decide to take on this task?

Well, I mean, as I sort of mentioned in passing there, But the Linotype Library, which was the library that controlled Helvetica before it merged with Monotype, is now part of monotype. So we're stewards of Helvetica. It's incumbent upon us to sort of bring to market the best Helvetica that can be. So up to this point, it's been Noia Hauvetica. But, yeah, was it hubris? There is some. But there's also the realization that it's our duty to things about it that are not quite working for 21st century designers.

Okay, well, tell me what those are, actually. That's what I'm curious about. Yeah. So the first thing was that single master problem that I talked about. That for hardcore typographers is a big deal because, I mean, if we split up the master's, the master drawings into three separate segments like we have with Helvetica now, then you're able to refine the spacing and make it more stylish at larger sizes. And you're able to refine the spacing in order to make it more legible at really small sizes. So we've divided into three separate masters, a micromaster, a text master, and a display master. And we designed those specifically for the sizes they're intended to be used at.

So at smaller sizes, the smallest sizes, the micro has really open spacing. The interiors, the letter forms are a little more open. The X height is larger. That's the height of the lowercase X, which sort of lends the visual size to the type. So by increasing the excite type appears to be larger, even at smaller sizes. And then increasing the stroke weight so that as the type gets smaller, it still remains substantial enough to be red. And that's the first thing, like just getting those size masters back into the tight face,

the things that were stripped out 35 years ago or close to 40 years ago. The next thing is that we increased the number of weights. So we added a hairline for the display and an extra black for the display. And we also augmented the weights on the other two masters so that they have more extensive weight. Those are so big, broad stroke things that we felt were necessary. There are some really tragic things to bring it right back home. and to bring it, you know, sort of to a tech meme listener. The thing that is probably most important is that the at sign, which in 1982 meant at,

but in, you know, in 2019, it's everywhere, you know, every one of us own an ad sign. And it's, it shows up in our, our daily reading in a way that we couldn't have predicted in 1982 or we could have predicted some people, three people could have predicted. in Helvetica, especially for something that's being seen so often. So just as Hendrik Weber, who championed the redesign early on, said, just for the at sign, it's worth doing. But we improved a lot of other characters also. There are a lot of currency symbols that didn't exist in the original design

that got either, that were either not in the design or were at. added as the years went by. So we redesigned those wholesale so that they fit more with the ethos of the typeface. And then there were these characters, alternate characters, that were sort of incorporated and then deaccessioned as the type evolved over its first 60 years. And we've reinstituted a number of those.

And those give more range. So it can, I mean, they modulate the feeling of the typeface in a way that makes it, in some instances, a very different typeface. The same bones and the same DNA, but I'm able to speak in a slightly modulated way. So those are the big things. Yeah, it's a lot. I'm sorry. Well, no, no. I work. What I'm imagining, you know, part of the process is, is like, like,

the whole story of Helvetica is almost about the impact that technology has had, you know, either on the font or what the font has had, the impact of the fun has had on technology. So, like, how much of that went into your thinking in terms of, like, you know, is it even, is it possible to, like, future-proof a font design when you have no idea what the use cases would be? Like, again, 30 years ago, no one could imagine, you know, reading on tiny little smartphone screens and things like that. Right. Yeah, no, it's not possible. Things will change, you know, that we can count on that. They'll change pretty dramatically in the next 10 to 15 years. And with the six decades that it's been around already, Helvetica has sort of proven itself sturdy enough to withstand a lot of change. But there were certain things like, you know, that screens would be the prevalent means of reading, most of our text, or that's redundant, but that was not sort of in the, it wasn't in the water in the 80s.

And now you sort of, in the way that, you know, web designers think mobile first, we have to think screen first and type design at this point. That design typeases for print, but now, and then it bifurcated. So you sort of, you had to pay attention to what was happening on screen, but it wasn't the primary thing. And now I think in a really substantial way, we think... And is there... Sorry, go ahead. So, I mean, in as much as the typeface never sort of looked at... Albedica as the typeface, never looked at itself as the screen first.

Now it definitely is. And is there, you know, how much thinking... As much as, you know, obviously, as you said, you can't future-proof for things, but like how much were you designing for the now in the sense of, well, there could be smart, smart watch faces that we have to think about. There could be, you know, you know, 8K billboard ads and Times Square, you know, that are, you know, 100 feet tall or something. Like how much were you trying to design for the immediate now that you could plan for? In a fairly major way. So, I mean, one of the sort of tech things with typefaces that's right on the horizon.

That's sort of almost ready for prime time is a format for type called OpenType Variations. And it exists and some people use it, but it's not been wholesale adopted yet. It has browser support. Those channels and pricing, a lot of things about it still haven't been. We're designing all of our type now with the idea that it will eventually be available in this variations format. And what a variations format does is sort of, It jettisoned the idea of buying a tight face by weight. So you would never buy Helvetica light or Helvetica bold with a variations typeface.

You would buy Helvetica. Flexibility program with tight. Changing weights based on CSS coding, conditional CSS coding, like allowing a typeface to become bolder on its own when it realizes that it's being used at a very small size. We've designed Helvetica now with the idea that it will eventually become a variations font. So all of the structures there for a full variations font because it's a typeface and it will know what weight it is and it will eventually know what width it is. So there'll be a compressed and extended access to the typeface also.

I say a typeface knows what it is, it just sort of knows its, the typeface has a lot of potential build into it, but it's not quite realizing yet. It's still an incredibly useful typeface, but it will become incredible. more useful once it becomes a variation from. So that buys it some lifetime. You maybe can get 20 or 30 years out of Helvetica now before you have to do Helvetica now, now, maybe. My final question, I'm super curious about process and things like this, because we're always talking about, like, businesses and teams.

And like, what is the actual process of redesigning a typeface in the sense that, like, how How big is the team of people involved? How many prototypes? How many years of work? Do you do focus groups? Just give me a pencil sketch idea of what the process is for doing something like this? Well, sort of yes to all of those things. So they're probably in the tech aspect of this type base from design, when I say tech,

I mean studio. We're all using technology within the monotype studio. But within our monotype studio, which is about 60 people of Half of the people in the studio worked on Helvetica now in some shape or form. About six of those were designers who were directly touching the outlines of the letters. And the rest of them are people who make the work that we do as designers work. So there's a lot of back-end coding and testing and proofing that just, makes the work that comes out of Monotype Studio really, you know, really great and bulletproof.

So that's the size of the team. The process is, I mean, the process is really long, but the actual design part of it is probably a quarter of that. So in 20, I say 2014, a small group of people within the studio got together and started theorizing about what a new version of Helvetica would look like, what it needed to be, like what improvements would be made in terms of optical sizes, in terms of alternate characters, in terms of additional characters that weren't around in 1982, etc.

So they put together a document that sort of guided the process of the redesign over the next four years. And then the next four years involved a lot of prototypes and discussions and proofs and more discussion to make sure that before we embarked on this wholesale, that we were on the right track. And then the team of actual designers was assembled. That's when I was tapped to be part of it. And that was a year and a half ago. And so then there was a year of really intense working.

That was front end loaded with a lot of research, looking back at previous printings. previous versions of Helvetica and all of its different technologies, ascertaining the things about those different versions that were worth preserving the things that we wanted to correct. And then a 3,000 mile journey. Just get to work, like to make it. But, yeah, there are so many prototypes, especially for the smaller stuff and the larger stuff.

I mean, the text we all feel very comfortable with because we've been looking at. at it for a long time. But the display stuff had to be proofed at really large scale to make sure that, like you said, when somebody's using it, you know, 20 feet tall on a billboard in Times Square that's, you know, projected from the back or, you know, LED or whatever, nothing about those outlines causes anyone to question. It looks better than how that it has ever looked. And then at the smaller sizes, almost the exact opposite has to happen. But at the micro sizes, the typeface has to give the impression that it's Helvetica, but it has to be able to stand up to really sort of rigorous conditions.

There are letter forms in Helvetica micro that look strange when you view them at very large sizes, but when you're looking at them at 4.0.5 point or 6 point, or their equivalent pixels, they look like Helvetica, but much more legible. Proofing and prototyping, both in print and on screen, or I should say on screen and in print, in order to make sure all of the letter forms work. And then all of our work gets handed over to another team that sort of runs it through.

They question everything that we did. I mean, we're all on the same team, but it's QA and proofing. and finishing that makes the tight face actually function as well as it does. All right. Seriously, last question. What's been the response to Helvetica new so far? Well, Helvetica now. Now, sorry, Helvetica now, I apologize. Noia was new. Now is now. The response has been, I think we all sort of steeled ourselves very early on for the idea that Helvetica is a sort of lightning rod for people who are superfans and for people

who just, you know, hate it because it's the way thing. So, I mean, I've been surprised by this sort of overwhelmingly positive response to it, just because I had prepared myself for a bunch of Helvetica haters to sort of surface. And, yeah, I mean, those people still get to me, obviously, but, but the, ultimately it's been incredibly well received it's selling well and we're seeing it in use already so it's great