The Helvetica Book


Miss Tiffany
15.Dec.2005 10.10am
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I wonder if this is the same book. If so, I wouldn’t pay full-price for it. This book is for hardcore collectors and helvetica-fetishists. I was given a copy so the collector in me was blessedly satiated without having to hurt my pocketbook.


staticwasabi
15.Dec.2005 10.14am
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it’s different from that book, you can get it from amazon.jp here.

at least i think it is. can’t read any japanese.


tomdonahue
15.Dec.2005 1.39pm
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It’s by Hideakai Otani, a web/graphic designer from Tokyo. The target audience seems to be graphic designers — MdN is the publisher of a popular Japanese graphic design magazine.
It has 128 pages, half in color. To me it looks great.

Contents
Visual prologue - Essay on Helvetica typography by Hiroshi (?) Sato, based on material from Haas, with designs by the author.
1. Information about Miedinger and Linotype’s Helvetica.
2. History of sans serif. Features a digital redrawing of Haas Unica by the author.
3. Comparison of Helvetica, Univers, and Akzidenz Grotesk.
4. Tips and tricks from Japanese designers.

The author also designs fonts. One of them is here. I like the [at] mark. The person who was asking recently about 3-sided [at] marks might want to look at it.


antiphrasis
15.Dec.2005 2.27pm
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Thomas,

That PDF is pretty funny... it says “Sans Selif”... :-)


tomdonahue
15.Dec.2005 4.47pm
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>That PDF is pretty funny… it says “Sans Selif”… :-)

You noticed that. :)
Well, he’s a designer, and that’s why the book is in Japanese.

BTW, looking around his site I stumbled across this. Amazing. In my real life I do documentation for video kit, and I just gotta show this to the engineers.

You can click the little green buttons for font samples (although the links in the popups don’t work anymore).


Kunihiko_Okano
15.Dec.2005 9.11pm
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You can see some pages of this book.(PDF Files)
p040-041.pdf

p066-067.pdf

p104-105.pdf