Helvetica And Some Free Alternatives to Helvetica
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
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Shiva Chettri is the editor and owner of Netchunks, a premier blog about Webmaster and Blogging Tips. He intends to make the web a friendlier place by sharing stuffs and articles which will help other webmasters and bloggers to becomes successful. His other interests includes Web Designing, Wordpress and Music of almost every genre. Send Shiva Chettri an email at admin@netchunks.comSubscribe
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Well great post … thank’s
Thank you foo Iskandar. Thanks for visiting my blog
cool man
Great alternatives , but can u write on some more articles on some new and latest font available……….
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