1

It is not sur­pris­ing. It was not made for this ))))

Denis
February 4th, 2012 at 08:06 am

2

Hel­vetica is pretty ter­ri­ble at small sizes, pretty life­less oth­er­wise. Nice graphic show­ing Hel­vetica failing.

Copperplate Gothic Bold
February 7th, 2012 at 05:14 am

3

No, it wasn’t designed for the many small screens of 1957.

Jake
February 10th, 2012 at 17:57 pm

4

I love Hel­vetica in the right con­text, but new faces are required for new applications.

Thanks for the com­par­i­son chart.

London Crockett
February 18th, 2012 at 02:22 am

5

We didn’t used Hel­vetica for along time — I guess since 95. We were bored because every­thing seems to be design around and with the Helv.

For the web it wasn’t intented to be used and it was tech­ni­cally impos­si­ble. Nowa­days with newer tech­nol­ogy it’s a bit dif­fer­ent. Web fonts are on the way.

Hel­vetica isn’t a web font. Period.

Look at the Lufthansa CD. After so many years, it’s still styl­ish. But even Lufthansa uses Arial etc. on their site.

Guess why.

Mac
February 18th, 2012 at 07:17 am

6

In my opin­ion it’s a stan­dard font.. Wasn’t meant for small size..

Thanks for the clar­i­fi­ca­tion graphics.

Tassneam
March 25th, 2012 at 23:06 pm

7

This chart demon­strates how the word ‘mil­li­liter’ is prac­ti­cally unread­able in any type­face, on screen, when set to 12pt. It also shows how supe­rior Hel­vetica is at a larger scale to other sans-serif typefaces.

Charlie
March 28th, 2012 at 22:44 pm

8

Maybe not in your image, but small Hel­vetica looks pretty awe­some on my retina dis­play. Just sayin’

Louis
April 9th, 2012 at 23:31 pm

9

Hey. I love you. But not Helvetica.

Emily Orzel
September 24th, 2012 at 17:34 pm

10

Nice, short and to the point.

Edward
October 13th, 2012 at 19:45 pm

11

Point­less ! Since Hel­vetica wasn’t designed for the screen it makes no sense to com­pare it with type­faces designed for the screen. Also as men­tioned before, retina dis­plays and other high res. solu­tions are on their way that will make things look alot more crisp.

uhmwelll...
October 19th, 2012 at 00:15 am

12

[…] http://spiekermann.com/en/helvetica-sucks/ […]

Erik Spiekermann – Fonts on screen vs. print « Blog Sans
January 21st, 2013 at 20:47 pm

13

A nice com­par­i­son. As men­tioned, it is a lit­tle out of con­text I guess but it’s great to see.

Steve Perry
March 5th, 2013 at 15:00 pm

14

I notice you have Meta and Unit avail­able to you, so I’m curi­ous: as the designer of your fonts, do you still own the copy­right to them? To what extent are you bound by the restric­tions of FSI’s EULA like the rest of us?

Lower
April 27th, 2013 at 22:30 pm