A gothic hard rock band?
No, Akzidenz Grotesk is the 1896 typeface that, 50 years ago, inspired the Haas Type Foundry in Muenchenstein, Switzerland to design Helvetica. Helvetica is 50 years old. Hooray. You can see why they changed the name.
"Ms Jones, type my letters in Grotesque Accidents, will you?"
"So, what font were you thinking of for your company logo?" / "Well, Akzidenz Grotesk says it all ..."
Not going to happen.
Much cleverer people than me can probably explain why different fonts work in different ways. Generally I would say a san-serif font like Helvetica (or Arial, the digital version) is okay for a sign or a headline but not for a large body of text; and yet, our company newsletter is set in the san-serif Futura and looks fine. Maybe it's because Futura is just a little bit more compact. Not to mention art deco. Here's Helvetica:
and here's Futura:
Almost the same, just subtle differences here and there that take up less space.Maybe said cleverer people could also explain why these two Helvetica/Arial characters:
are exactly the same as this Futura pair:
-when they don't look remotely like each other, which probably leads us into whole new realms of psychology and human perception.One day I shall devise my own font. It will be called Benface and will be large, friendly and well rounded.
However, I promise that the minute I form a hard-rock band, it will be called Akzidenz Grotesk. Hmm, that'll happen.
ReplyDeleteIf they designed a font for Peter Davison, they'd have to call it Pleasantopenface.
That question mark is the main reason I don't like Futura... it's so 80s.
ReplyDeleteI am quite fond of Helvetica though (isn't it called Trebuchet on PCs?). I think it works fine on screen but I agree that you need something serif-y for books. And really you need Palatino.
I used to think I would never tire of Bookman Old Style but I was wrong. And don't even get me started on Comic Sans: the font which makes everything look a) patronising and b) home made.
Yes! Someone else out there hates Comic Sans too.
ReplyDeleteI like a nice Garamond for printed stuff but am happy to stick with arial for emails.