Neue Helvetica uses a numerical design classification scheme, like Univers. The font family is made up of 51 fonts including nine weights in three widths (8 in normal width, 9 in condensed, and 8 in extended width variants) as well as an outline font based on Helvetica 75 Bold Outline (no Textbook or rounded fonts are available). Linotype distributes Neue Helvetica on CD.[84] Neue Helvetica also comes in variants for Central European and Cyrillic text.
Unlike earlier digitisations, Schwartz created two different optical sizes (labelled Text and Display), which have different spacing metrics giving tighter spacing at display size and looser spacing to increase legibility in body text. The release includes a number of features not present on digitisations branded as Helvetica, stylistic alternates such as separate punctuation sets for upper- and lower-case text, "modernist" cedilla designs styled to match the comma and reduced-height numbers to blend into extended text.[112][b] Both optical sizes provide stylistic alternates for a straight-legged upper case "R", while the Display variant additionally provides stylistic alternates for a lower case "a" without tail.[113][114] It originated from an abandoned redesign plan for The Guardian newspaper. Writing for Typographica, Matthew Butterick described the release as better than any previous digital release of Helvetica "it's never looked better".[115] Users include Bloomberg Businessweek, the Whitney Museum, and for the album Midnights, Taylor Swift.[116][117][118] Schwartz's company Commercial Type have additionally developed a companion monospaced version, agate version for small sizes and stencil font.[119] The release does not include condensed weights or support for Greek and Cyrillic.
Helvetica Now was also released as a variable font, which has two styles (Regular and Italic) and three adjustable axes (weight, width, and optical size). Supported weight ranges include hairline to extra black, optical sizes include four point to infinity, widths include compressed and condensed.[134][135][136]
Much more loosely, Roboto was developed by Christian Robertson of Google as the system font for its Android operating system; this has a more condensed design with the influence of straight-sided geometric designs like DIN 1451.
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