HELLVETI TYPEFACE
As I dive deeper into my renewed obsession with typeface design and experimentation, I found myself circling back to what might be the most objectively boring font of all time: Helvetica. Over the years, I’ve seen designers do incredible—sometimes even mind-blowing—things with it. And yet, I always catch myself muttering: yeah, but... it’s still Helvetica. Rather than sit comfortably in my snobby type designer chair and dismiss it on principle, I decided to challenge myself: What would I do if I had to remix this sacred cow of typography? I didn’t have a master plan. I started by slicing paths, grafting parts from other typefaces onto Helvetica like some kind of alphabetic Frankenstein—and honestly, every result was trash. So I hit reset. I went back to the literal drawing board and began tracing each letterform by hand. No embellishments, no clever tricks—just tracing. The results are purposeful but imperfect. They hold onto the essence of Helvetica’s proportions and rhythm... probably. Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, I’m sharing the experiment here for you to use however you like. You can download it here.
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I named it Hellveti because working with Helvetica—breaking it apart, reassembling it, trying to give it soul—felt like crawling through typographic hell. Every curve, every decision, haunted by the ghost of perfection. It’s a nod to the torture of remixing something so rigid, so revered, that even the slightest tweak feels like blasphemy. Also…it just sounded cool. Helvetica’s evil twin. Helvetica with attitude. Helvetica if it had a punk phase, and never grew out of it. Feel free to download it here.
