Helvetica at 50

The Washington Post today ran a wire story about Helvetica‘s fiftieth anniversary. It is hardly my favorite typeface — I’m more of a Frutiger lad — but because of its endemic use and particularly in the local Metro system for waymarking, I think of this Swiss import as ours. Local yet universal. Perhaps I should have saved this sermon for Pentecost.

And can you tell the difference between Helvetica and Ariel? A quiz. (I couldn’t.)

But it also gives me an excuse to point to a really cute (and liberal licensed) Flash animation featuring the matchy international travel pictograms, which could equally be entitled “The Adventures of Helvetica Man.”

Airport (Iain Anderson)

By Scott Wells

Scott Wells, 46, is a Universalist Christian minister doing Universalist theology and church administration hacks in Washington, D.C.

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