I am in no manner a typographer but still as a newbie designer, I feel that Helvetica has always remained mystic for me. It is the first font that I had to engage with as a designer. Seemingly interesting is it’s simplicity and it’s cleanliness.  It is quite old for that matter, a classic. It is also quite interesting that in this era of modern, grunge, jazzy Web 2.0 type fonts Helvetica still survives and not only survives but maintains it’s poise. It has been able to remain one of the most popular and sought out font till now. I am sure there are any graphic designers who have not used the Helvetica font or one of its alternative till now.

Helvetica has a long history to it. Helvetica has completed 52 years till now and also has a film based on itself. By the age, we can say it is a classic. The Helvetica typeface was developed(or I may say designed) by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann in 1957. It was designed to compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk (another simple, clean and classic font) in the Swiss market at that time. I think at that time it was named something else ( something with the name Grotesk along with it) afterwards in 1960 it was changed to Helvetica. They are many variants to the Helvetica family some of which are Helvetica Narrow,Helvetica Compressed, Helvetica Light etc.

The main problem comes here, Helvetica fonts cost very high. But designers love the simplicity of Helvetica. So they simply use the free alternatives that look quite similar to Helvetica. They may not be better than Helvetica but still do come quite come quite close.
Here are some Helvetica look-alike fonts that you may want to use in your next project:

Anson | Download

Aaargh, Normal | Download

Brie Light | Download

Castorgate | Download

Cicle Fina | Download

Coolvetica | Download

Cyrvetica | Download

FolksDecoon-Light | Download

Fudd | Download

GemFont One | Download

GeosansLight | Download

Goulong | Download

HeldustryFT Regular | Download

Josef Pro | Download

Junien | Download

LondonMM | Download

Luzern | Download

Mank Sans | Download

Nova Regular | Download

Oceania | Download

Print Clearly | Download

Quicksand | Download

Redring 1969 | Download

Sansation Regular | Download

Strait | Download

Street – Plain | Download

Vegur Regular | Download

Walkway Bold | Download

X360 by Redge | Download

Zag | Download

You may also notice that Arial is also an alternative of Helvetica.

P.S: All the font links have been updated since we had got complaints that all the font links were directing to the same file. We apologize for the inconvenience

Shiva Chettri is a young web entrepreneur, designer and a SEO Analyst and Consultant. You can find him blogging at Netchunks about Technology, SEO and Blogging

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