if your margarine is tasting you well, than you really are in trouble. ('it doesn't taste good' is the proper answer in this case, fyi)

Yeah, Paul, it's the Hidden Fortress—rescuing the Princess from enemy territory. I saw it before Star Wars came out, and in seeing the first Star Wars, I immediately saw the inspiration—which I think George Lucas has confirmed. Of course it's also hugely different in many ways.

Designers from the 60s and 70s loved Helvetica Margarine though, excactly because it's margarine, not butter. It doesn't really have a strong flavour of itself, making it a good anonymous carrier of information. I guess we've moved on from that idea of objectivity and neutrality though. At least it was still more or less new then. Now you can only really use helvetica in two situations: 1. If you want to directly reference to those 'glory days', or 2. If you are too lazy to make a choice.

Perhaps, however, you view this as the ultimate crime, gone unpunished!

Perhaps I don't.
Perhaps you think every typeface is an adaptation of some other typeface.

Isn't there a difference between absorbing ideas and shapes, which one then synthesizes and draws into a typeface from scratch -- and a salesman directing employees to put someone else's product in front of them and tweak it?

...paranoid...

As I said, I don't dislike Helvetica because of its typographic features.
Certainly, as a type designer, I am responsive to these.
But it would be a mistake to suggest, as Matthew does, that my opinions about it, as a type designer, are therefore purely technical and aesthetic, oh noble artisan that I am. As the proprietor of a type foundry, I am in business to publish new typefaces and sell font licenses. If font users can specify Helvetica not because they have any great attachment to its aesthetics but merely because it is a cultural default, surely a font manufacturer can dislike it for the same reason, without being paranoid?

From Some Thoughts on New Haas Grotesk, 1962
(Translation Helvetica Forever)

"Would it not be a poor sign of our times if everyone were to constantly use the same grotesque typeface? Of course it would. Let us take one step further, let us generalize and blatantly say that a good grotesque is a necessity in today's day and age, but that it should not become the sole, beatific typeface. In addition to the grotesques, the roman typefaces, in the medieval or classical form, as well as the Egyptienne and the related Clarendon must regain their ground. It will also become necessary, in future, to learn to distinguish when a grotesque is more suitable than a roman or an Egyptienne. Let us guard against the blanket use of the grotesque typeface, which could lead to an oppressive sans surfeit – and that would indeed be a disservice to New Haas Grotesk."

Strange. My last post didn’t bump the thread.
Server hickups while posting.

Unfortunately I don’t.
Just remembered seeing it on the web sone time ago.

Lucky Chris.
;-)

Forget about 'Helvetica'. Look out 'Univers'.

Contax Pro is the new geometric sans typeface series for the 21st century.

http://www.fontspring.com/fonts/type-innovations/contax-pro

What's so 'unpolite behavior'?

Just proud of my latest font family release and bringing it to attention.

Sorry you feel that way.

See also my comments in the other thread.

Florian,
Kindly remove Akaczun's other blatant spam from the Helvetica vs Univers thread.

@Andreas:

"My personal assumption is: Helvetica owes its omnipresence to it being simply THE NON-TYPEFACE, lending generously absolution to all and everything.

Call me naïve if need be... but isn't that the end? The goal? The finale? The Rapture? The Philosopher's Stone of Typography? To make a form which conveys its meaning through completely invisible function?

Well, one goal, at least. ;)

Marvin was "Too busy thinkin' bout my baby (and I ain't got time for nothing else)" -- but not too busy to perform the song.

And now I’d like this AK guy’s accounts and his miserable ‘typeface’ spam getting trashed altogether.
Finally ;-)

Surely the intended target of Contax Pro, à la Maag, is not Univers but Avenir or some other geometrically routed font. At least get your pitch right!