Helvetica in Advertising

In researching various font types, Helvetica stands out as one of the most recognized fonts in the world. This is primarily due to it's use in large corporate ad campaigns. Developed in Switzerland in 1957, helvetica was introduced to rival older sans-serif typefaces. Helveticas popularity is due in part to the wave of large typeface ads which boomed in the late 50's and 60's. In addition to advertisments, street signs, transportation systems and fine art prints were also printed in in helvetica. This intruduction has led to the mass production of this typeface and thus created a typeface which can be clearly recognized and easily read. Helvetica is described as a neutral text in that the text has no meaning itself, it takes no position other than conveying messages. This is unlike many of the fancy, decorative, or older sanscript fonts which cause readers to make assumptions of content based on the type face used.