Neue Haas Grotesk Font Family

Neue Haas Grotesk was initially drawn in 1957-1958 by Max Miedinger for the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei of Switzerland with art direction by the firm’s head, Eduard Hoffmann. Neue Haas Grotesk was to be the answer to the British and German grotesques that had become so fashionable due to the triumph of functionalist Swiss typography. The font was later altered and distributed as Helvetica by Linotype AG.

While Neue Haas Grotesk had to be modified to work on the Linotype hot metal linecasters, Linotype Helvetica was in some ways a ‘new typeface’ in its own right. For example, the matrices for Regular and Bold had to be of equal widths and thus, the Bold had to be redrawn at a much narrower proportion. While still in metal typesetting, Helvetica went through further changes as it was transitioning to phototypesetting.