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Enjoy the best stories and perspectives from the theatre world today.
Enjoy the best stories and perspectives from the theatre world today.
The Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ current cabaret comedy, Gutenberg! The Musical!, is a play about inventor Johannes Gutenberg within a play about two would-be theatre composers attempting to raise some cash to produce their show.
Two actors play a whole cast of characters including the famed inventor who created the first moveable-type press, considered by many historians to be the most significant invention ever recorded.
In a tongue-in-cheek nod to the evolution of print, the love interest in Gutenberg! The Musical! is aptly named “Helvetica.” Described as Gutenberg’s “dim” assistant who believes herself to be in love with the boss, Helvetica’s name is, perhaps, divinely inspired.
If typefaces had their version of a Miss Universe pageant, the Helvetica font would have reigned for the past 65+ years. In an ironic twist, she (yes, in sisterhood with the character in the comedy, we’ll call the font “she”), she may be wildly popular, but she was intended to be “common,” “neutral,” “sturdy,” or, dare we say it, “boring.” According to Ellen Lupton, Betty Cooke, and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair at Maryland Institute College of Art, Helvetica “provided something that designers wanted: a typeface apparently devoid of personality. In contrast, other popular sans serif typefaces that existed at the time, such as Gill Sans and Futura, have stronger voices and more distinctive geometries. Helvetica met our craving for corporate vanilla.”
Well…vanilla with caramel sauce, whipped cream, and a cherry on top. But let’s go back to the 1950s to understand the history of this font and its lasting impact.
Unbeknownst to this writer, the font industry has always been highly competitive. When sales at the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) in Switzerland began to fade due to more attractive competition, Haas’ President Eduard Hoffman commissioned Max Miedinger to design a new typeface that had “great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage,” according to designandpaper.com.
Originally designed in 1957 and called Neue Haas Grotesk (maybe not the best name to win a popularity contest), Hoffman wanted to make sure the font could compete internationally. So, he licensed the font to Germany’s D. Stempel AG type foundry for use on linotype type machines and rebranded it “Helvetica,” which is the Latin name for Swiss and set out to evoke the ultra-modern design for which the country is known. The font and its new name capitalized on the design trends of the day, finding great enthusiasm among designers and ad agencies. #FabulousFont #TrendyTypeface #StrutYourStuffHel
Technically speaking, it is a Grotesque sans serif typeface. When it debuted, Helvetica bumped the Akzidenz-Grotesk font by the Berthold Type Foundry off the typeface throne, a position it had held for the previous 50 years. Even after receiving a facelift in 1983 featuring a full suite of widths and heights (she can really pull off stilettos), Helvetica has remained at the peak of popularity. The font is now the face of such leading companies as BMW, General Motors, Lufthansa, Motorola, Nestlé, and NASA. In fact, Steve Jobs selected Helvetica as the standard system font when he launched Macintosh computers in 1984. It stayed in the Apple family as the first iPhone font until Apple replaced it with a typeface of its own design in 2015. Even Microsoft modeled its own Arial font after the clean lines of Helvetica (there’s always a copycat ready to steal the crown). It’s even the font of the New York Subway system, and if you can make it there, you can make it…oh, you get the drift.
Not one just for the pageant stage, the font even made its 2007 screen debut in Helvetica the documentary, now streaming on Apple TV, so it was really just a matter of time before Helvetica made her stage debut in Gutenberg! The Musical, now playing at a theatre near you.
DETAILS
Gutenberg! The Musical!
Now – May 4, 2025 • Garner Galleria Theatre
Tickets