All of these provide the same clear, unfussy neutrality of Helvetica but with a different visual twist to help give your designs a more distinctive look. In the list below, we've brought together ten such alternatives. And since the dawning of the digital age, it's been ubiquitous on software, apps and websites everywhere.īut given this widespread use – which has been criticised as overuse by leading typographers such as Erik Spiekermann – designers will often seek an alternative to Helvetica to avoid their work looking too samey and predictable. There's even been a popular film about it. Helvetica has also been widely used in road and railway signage, from the UK and USA to Japan and South Korea. Some of the most recognisable uses of Helvetica have been on US tax forms, EU warnings on tobacco products, and in wordmarks, including American Airlines, BMW, Sears, Microsoft, Panasonic, Target and Verizon. Like the Swiss nation itself, designers loved its neutrality, making it almost infinitely adaptable for all kinds of projects. And it quickly became one of the most popular typefaces of the mid-20th century. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesk, the sans-serif, neo-grotesque typeface was designed by Swiss designers Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann in 1957. The closest you may come to the exact HelveticatNeue on the Macintosh may be available from Monotype or Linotype on-line at their web sites.Helvetica is one of the best-known and most-used fonts in the history of modern typography. In this particular case, having a slightly different name is probably for the best if you can't get the exact same font, because it will force you to look for any problems that the replacement font may cause (slightly different metrics, styles, etc.).Īs far as I know, Apple does not license its version of HelveticaNeue for use on other platforms and even if the font is in OpenType or Windows TrueType format and could be copied to a Windows system, you are probably in violation of the licensing conditions for that font under MacOS X. that share the same names, but are slightly different. There are hundreds of different variants of Helvetica, Times, Arial, etc.

The name might not match exactly (actually, probably won't match exactly) and you may need to make adjustments in your document to use name of the font that you do license.įWIW, your experience is not uncommon.

Unless you get the font file itself from whoever created or last worked on the document and used that font (assuming that the font is either an OpenType or a Windows format TrueType font and that you can legally use the font), you may need to separately license Helvetica Neue from any one of the font foundries with a Helvetica Neue family.

Helvetica neue cyr adobe font