Like the Neue Helvetica and Univers Next typefaces, the Neue Haas Unica family can be used just about anywhere – or for any project. The regular, medium and bold weights know no boundaries and the heavy and black designs are ideal for when typography needs to be powerful and commanding. The family’s lighter weights are perfect for headlines and other large settings, as well as small blocks of copy at typical text sizes. Toshi Omagari of Monotype Studio has given this classic a fresh, digital facelift with more weights, more languages and more letters to meet today’s digital and print needs.Īvailable in 18 styles, the Neue Haas Unica family is remarkably appropriate for a wide range of applications, possessing a delicate gradation of weights and clear character shapes. Originally released in 1980 by the Haas Type Foundry and designed by Team ’77 - André Gürtler, Erich Gschwind and Christian Mengelt- for phototypesetting technology of the day, the design was never successfully updated for today’s digital environments – until now. Ouch.The Neue Haas Unica™ family is an extended, reimagined version of the Haas Unica® design, a Helvetica® alternative that achieved near mythical status in the type community before it virtually disappeared. Notice the ugly weight difference between the caps and faux “small caps” in the Helvetica.
Here’s a comparison of Helvetica Neue and Unica, both set at 30/30, with InDesign’s optical kerning turned on.
Even Myriad Pro, conceived and drawn in the digital age, doesn’t have real small caps. The Haas Type Foundry which had acquired Deberny & Peignot, the copyright holders of Helvetica and Univers respectively, was set to release a new version of Helvetica for the then new era of electronic phototypesetting. For one thing, Unica has true small caps! - Still a rarity among sans serif typefaces, and missing entirely from almost all versions of Helvetica and Univers. Neue Haas Unica is a revival of Haas Unica, a neogrotesque typeface that was originally released in 1980.
‘Nuff said.) Unica is designed for both display work and text, and it works on screen and on paper.īut there are other reasons to get excited. Neue Haas Grotesk Pro Font Family Christian Schwartz sees his version of Max Miedingers seminal Swiss Modern sanserif as primarily a restoration. (Try OS X Yosemite on a non-Retina display. Univers and Helvetica are classics, but if you’ve worked with them you’ll know they’re not so readable in smaller sizes, and they really, really don’t translate well to your average computer screen. I recommend reading the rest of the article, and the background history of Neue Haas Unica on the Linotype website, because from a typographic point of view this news is on par with hearing that Amelia Earhart’s plane had been discovered, but that’s not the only reason this is good news.
Imagine it fading into obscurity and existing for decades as nothing more than a cult film, a historical footnote, an object of fascination among serious movie buffs. IMAGINE IF, DUE to some fluke, The Empire Strikes Back had only been shown in a couple of movie theaters. Some things are just too cool to stay calm about.Īn article that appeared recently on Wired starts like this: