Helvetica's Evil Twin, Hellvetica, Will Haunt Your Nightmares (fastcompany.com) 47
Freshly Exhumed shares a report from Fast Company: Hold your favorite graphic design tome close. We now know what the classic typeface Helvetica would look like if it came from the underworld. Yes, it will keep type enthusiasts up at night. The design darling Helvetica -- that ubiquitous sans-serif typeface developed by Max Miedinger in 1957, representative of the crisp Swiss design aesthetic of that period, and star of its own documentary by the same name -- has made a deal with the kerning devil. The results aren't pretty. They're not meant to be.
Zack Roif and Matthew Woodward, both associate creative directors at the international advertising agency R/GA, have released a new typeface available free to download, Hellvetica, and it will make all your worst kerning nightmares come true. While each character has the same form as the classic typeface it's riffing on, Hellvetica utilizes inconsistent, variable spacing between each letterform to give an overall effect that something has gone terribly astray. Nope, that wasn't a mistake. You might just say it was intentionally erroneous. The project is a study in playfulness and rule-breaking, "an exercise in going against the 'designer instincts' to fix up that awful kerning. Hundred percent break the rules," says Woodward. "Don't listen to your gut. Forget your training... and make that logo kern in hell!"
Zack Roif and Matthew Woodward, both associate creative directors at the international advertising agency R/GA, have released a new typeface available free to download, Hellvetica, and it will make all your worst kerning nightmares come true. While each character has the same form as the classic typeface it's riffing on, Hellvetica utilizes inconsistent, variable spacing between each letterform to give an overall effect that something has gone terribly astray. Nope, that wasn't a mistake. You might just say it was intentionally erroneous. The project is a study in playfulness and rule-breaking, "an exercise in going against the 'designer instincts' to fix up that awful kerning. Hundred percent break the rules," says Woodward. "Don't listen to your gut. Forget your training... and make that logo kern in hell!"
Nearly as bad as Comic Sans (Score:4, Funny)
...but still not quite there...
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On par with Times with a poor truetype renderer like on early Linux desktops. Or like on Wine today.
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Well, the thing is that until a few years ago, Apple had patents on TrueType which limited what the renderer can do.
And kerning, leading and ligatures are so complex they really are little programs - so now you have security nightmares because every key you press now has to involve dozens of little programs in TrueType to figure out how to kern, lead and form the ligatures properly.
And after having fun with the character shapes, you now have to render them down to bitmaps for display, which can involve even
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I'm not a typography nerd, but damn it's a rabbit hole if you think about it a little bit just ensuring your text appears alright on screen.
Yes. I worked on early truetype libraries for eInk displays, as the points overlap in a fuzzy way unlike with a typical raster display.
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I can't even see what the font looks like because the moron who set up the Hellvetica site apparently doesn't know that text and pictures don't need third party spyware JavaScripts to display.
Fucking clueless millennials...
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They're "creative associate directors". You should be impressed that they made it through toilet training.
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Not necessarily a millennial, but likely someone duped by those "Learn to Program a Website in 24 hours" classes.
Lots of other examples (Score:5, Funny)
If you just go looking for fonts on the internets you'll find lots of fonts with terrible kerning. No need to do it on purpose.
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Yeah, but it's more fun to make fun of the stupidity of them.
Yup, KEMing. Joke should be obvious.
Re: Lots of other examples (Score:2)
Even worse if activate proper hinting most web fonts have broken hinting and only shows correctly with it off.
True Type ? no thanks (Score:3, Funny)
what are they thinking releasing a true type font ?
no way I'm using that
Is there anything sadder.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Is there anything sadder.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: Is there anything sadder.. (Score:4, Informative)
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Well you're better than the OP who's just a knob.
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Yes, there is something sadder; people with nothing better to do than bitch online about people who DO have something better to do.
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Anyone posting in a slashdot comments section about typefaces at all is a sad.
Finally, a Helvetica font with readable kerning. (Score:5, Funny)
Notice the "rn" in "Burn". Notice that you can tell that the word is not "bum". That makes this, accidentally, the single most readable Helvetica variant to date.
Re:Finally, a Helvetica font with readable kerning (Score:5, Funny)
Oops. My bad. The word was "kern". Notice it does not look like "kem". No, wait.... Eh. Whatever.
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Yeah, but he also likes rambling on and on to empty chairs.
Just sayin’.
You can't say that in Evansville WI schools (Score:2)
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please pass along our apologies to the cheesehead shitkickers
Did it copy Times New Roman (Score:2)
300 fonts for $12 (Score:2)
Back in the 1990s, I once bought a cheap font pack, you know, on floppy disk. ALL the fonts had kerning problems like this!
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That’s because you bought the double density floppy rather than the high density floppy.
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Maybe you shook the disc too much on the way home.
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The 90s was truly the golden age of shovelware. It really exploded with CD-ROMs when suddenly instead of 300 crap fonts on a floppy disk you could have 30,000 crap fonts on a shiny disc.
Heilvetica! (Score:2)
20 Bucks say this will Font will become ... (Score:2, Insightful)
... the newest fad in edgy font design ... errrm ... right now.
My ad-blocker disables site-specific fonts (Score:1)
My ad-blocker disables site-specific fonts. Yours should too. Just saying...
You can make exceptions for some sites, but by default — just say "No".
Old news (Score:1)
Rocksmith has been using that font for its lyrics for years.
So Hellvetica finally explains why (Score:2)
What happens... (Score:2)
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Not a bad font (Score:1)
A typsetter's worst nightmare (Score:2)
I've screamed bloody murder when a Compugraphic model 7500 typesetter decided to do this crap in the middle of a rush job... All it needed was some lube on the guide and support rails, but jeez...
Well that lasted about five seconds. (Score:1)