The Helvetica Killer

Most people seem to have a love or hate relationship with Helvetica. Bruno Maag (of Dalton Maag) not only dislikes Helvetica, he has gone as far as to attempt to 'wipe it off the face of the planet'. Bruno Maag, and his team have created a new typeface which was created with intentions to replace Helvetica. It is called Aktiv Grotesk. He claims the problem with Helvetica (apart from being repeatedly misused and overused) is that it is poorly crafted, anything but a modernist font, and it is illegible for body copy (which for a Grotesk font, should be completely the opposite).

Bruno wanted to create something that was between Univers and Helvetica—"not as icy cold as Univers but devoid of all the quirks of Helvetica. To have a font that is beautifully crafted, spaced well, with not a chink in a curve or anything – perfectly drawn but hopefully with a bit of personality. We wanted to create something that could be used in a corporate environment but that has that bit of warmth that Univers doesn’t have...The x height is fractionally higher than Helvetica but the rounds have a little bit of squareness about them that Helvetica’s don't have. The differences are really subtle but give it just that bit of personality."

The following are comparisons between Helvetica (image 1) and Aktiv Grotesk (image 2).