It takes its name from the river that runs through Brixton, the area of London that is home to Helvetica-hater Dalton Maag’s UK studio. One place you might recognize it from is Tom’s of Maine “green” line of personal hygiene product packaging, including their toothpaste and deodorant.Įffra (10 styles) Similar to Avenir but with a little more flair, Effra was designed by Jonas Schudel and based on Caslon Junior. With dozens of variants in weight, width, and alternate characters, this versatile art deco geometric sans serif has become a modern classic. Proxima Nova (42 styles) by Mark Simonson. Theinhardt (18 styles) – Named after punchcutter and type designer Ferdinand Theinhardt and designed by Francois Rappo circa 2009, this classic Grotesk typeface is similar to Pragmatica but distinguished by a slightly extended descender in the lowercase ‘g.’ History aside, Theinhardt by Optimo is also the official font of the New York Times Magazine, looking just as sharp as urbane as its readers. A lot of good sites are using it for body copy especially, as it’s easy on the eyes and, let’s face it, looks super-cool. Although it was designed in 1988, Avenir by Linotype looks as modern and contemporary today as it did to me several years ago when I first came across it. A deliberate and appropriate choice, since Adrian Frutiger based it on two classic other sans serifs, Futura and Erbar. And frankly, it looks great and reads great on the web.Īvenir (12 styles) means “future” in French. Open Sans goes so well with today’s clean, flat design aesthetic, it’s eminently readable and unobtrusive, and in my view, it isn’t associated strongly enough with Google for the masses to notice. Except one-and that is Open Sans, which was essentially commissioned by Google and is used in their print and web ads as their brand font, just as Myriad is Apple’s brand font.
The only issue is that I personally don’t think there are a lot of what I consider to be really well designed fonts on there. They currently offer a whopping 651 font families you can use on your websites for free. Open Sans (10 styles) – By now, most of you know about Google Fonts-the cat’s out of the bag. Weights run from thin to fat, so I’ve had to play with Light, Thin and Book to get the right weight for print and web, and in headlines and body copy. Stag Sans (14 faces) – This font by Commercial Type is simply gorgeous. So without further ado, we give you… Our Top 10 Font Alternatives to Helvetica I choose them for the same reasons another designer would choose Helvetica, but also when I want something fresh.
DOES EXTENSIS FONTS INCLUDE AVENIR AND AVENIR LIGHT PROFESSIONAL
I love them all as only a type geek can, and I’ve used most of them for professional and personal projects. In a way, I’m sort of giving away the farm here because I’ll admit, these fonts have become my fallbacks.
Love it or hate it, Helvetica remains one of the most popular, ubiquitous, and enduring fonts of all time. The article was a hit! So, we decided it would be beneficial to publish the article again for your reading enjoyment. Believe it or not, there are quite a few Helvetica font alternatives you can use.Ī few years ago, we published an article to help designers and typography enthusiasts explore alternatives to Helvetica.