The Typofiles #17: Helvetica by Lars Müller
Helvetica: Homage to a Typeface
by Lars Müller was the first design-related book that I ever purchased. I found it at the F.I.T. bookstore in 2002 while staying in New York and have flipped through it so many times that the spine has cracked!
This book is particularly notable because it shows Helvetica in use around the world on the streets, in logos, on signs, in the subways, on clothing and more. The mix of images demonstrates the reach of Helvetica with both representations from unknown amateurs and celebrated designers.
Müller cheekily notes that Helvetica is the perfume of the city and he’s right. Here are a few examples of the type-packed book:
View more Helvetica scans in The Typofiles set on Flickr here.
Tags: The Typofiles, Typography
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8 People have left comments on this post
The book looks really interesting.Does he give the reason as to why helvetica is so widely used?
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I wonder how many of those logos are by Paul Rand..haha
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“perfume of the city”? nice.
p.s. love the new header! those heels are made for walkin’…
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I love the new header too. Maybe you should add red though … maybe make the .com part red. That would reflect “you” even more!
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saw this and thought of you
http://ffffound.com/image/e2e7b05a78eb711fd5275bd6426bb40590d04a4a
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New header! I like it, I think it’s more cohesive with your personal branding.
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Ashley: There is a bit of an intro that I didn’t go into that’s a few pages long at the beginning of the book.
Molly B: Yeah…perfume of the city is sort of an odd thing to say, but pretty awesome at the same time!
Karen: None of my personal branding has red, so I’ll probably avoid it for this project. Thanks for the input though!
Alicia – Sea of Ghosts: Thanks! I am still playing around with it, but the goal is to align everything with the branding that I currently have. The original header was from 2007 so it’s time for a change.
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I saw this yesterday on a bookstore and it looked familiar.. I figured out 5 minutes ago that I’d seen it here the day before! Great book. Simple and classy, just like Helvetica.
Love the new header!
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