Max Miedinger

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Max Miedinger (December 24, 1910 in Zurich, Switzerland – March 8, 1980, Zürich, Switzerland) was a Swiss typeface designer. He was famous for creating Neue Haas Grotesk typeface in 1957 which was renamed Helvetica in 1960. Marketed as a symbol of cutting-edge Swiss technology, Helvetica went global at once.[1]

Between 1926 and 1930 Miedinger was trained as a typesetter in Zürich, after which he attended evening classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zürich.

When he was sixteen years old, he became an apprentice typesetter at a book printing office for Jacques Bollmann( In Zurich). After four years of being an apprentice, Miedinger enrolled in the School of Arts and Crafts. When he was 26 years old, he went to work for an advertising studio called Globe. Here he worked as a typographer and improved his skills. After ten years of working at Globe, Miedinger then gained employment with Haas Type Foundry as a representative. This is where he would make his mark on history and design the most used typeface of the 20th century, Helvetica.

In 1956 Miedinger became a freelance graphic designer and it was about a year later he would collaborate with Edouard Hoffman on the typeface which would later be called Helvetica.

List of Designed fonts

  • Helvetica (also known as Neue Haas Grotesk)
  • Pro Arte
  • Horizontal
  • Swiss 921
  • Swiss 721
  • Monospace 821
  • Miedinger

History of Helvetica

Four years after Helvetica was invented, it was given an oblique brother. More weights were added later, but they were made by different designers in diverse foundries. These lacked consistency, and Helvetica became a hodge podge of different fonts.[2] Today, Helvetica is shunned by many designers since it is overused due to the fact that it is the default typeface on many desktop publishing software packages, made so because it is such a reliable, clear and easy to read typeface. Together with Times New Roman, Helvetica was the most specified and used font of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.

References

  1. ↑ Andrew Dickson meets Gary Hustwit, creator and director of the film Helvetica | Art & Architecture | Guardian Unlimited Arts
  2. ↑ http://cis1.westerntc.edu/halee/type/face_history.html

External links

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