Looking for a free Helvetica alternative aren’t you?

2020-10-05T01:44:11.450Z

Whenever you’re making a simple logo or full-blown publication or a website you probably ponder on choosing a minimal, elegant and top-notch font family for your professional design. Searching through multiple typeface libraries and looking at all these pricey fonts gives you a headache and you want to stop. But it does not have to be this way — here are my personal favourite Helvetica-alike fonts free for commercial use! No more scrolling through an endless nightmare.

A little bit of history

We all know Helvetica — probably the most sophisticated font of them all. Originally designed by Max Miedinger (with input from Eduard Hoffmann) in 1957 for Haas’sche Schriftgießerei — a Swiss manufacturer of foundry type. Today Max’s font has become one of the most famous fonts for its utterly designed characters.

Specimen of the typeface Neue Helvetica by Jim Hood (GearedBull)

Here are my top five sans (and grotesk) fonts based on a Helvetica typeface that can work well with your design. They are completely free for both home and commercial use.

TeX Gyre Heros

Within a package of TeX Gyre collection of fonts you can find this Helvetica replacement font designed by polish font designer Bogusław Jackowski specifically for the TeX e-foundry project. It contains Regular and Bold (along with italic and condensed versions) font weights only but it’s the perfect replacement for Swiss fonts. It’s the closest to Helvetica typeface I’ve ever found.

You can download it for free from GUST TeX Gyre Heros website.

Inter

Another great Helvetica alternative from a designer Rasmus Andersson who worked for many different companies, including Spotify, DropBox and Facebook. It has 18 styles and also ships as variable font! Rasmus designed it mainly for screens but you can use it on paper too! All these goodies are avaible for free!

You can download Inter font for free on Andersson’s website. His font is also available on Google Fonts.

Metropolis

Metropolis is a super-friendly font which resembles Google Sans family. Created by Chris Simpson it is great both for titles and plain text. Chris writes about his font:

A modern, geometric typeface. Influenced by other popular geometric, minimalist sans-serif typefaces of the new millenium. Designed for optimal readability at small point sizes while beautiful at large point sizes.

You can download Metropolis font from Chris’ GitHub page.

Montserrat

Yet another geometric font similar to Helvetica (but wider) and other sans fonts. Developed by Julieta Ulanowsky. She launched it as a Kickstarter project in 2011, in order to complete the first public release and share it with the world through Google Fonts. Now thanks to Julieta we have it for free!

You can grab a free copy on Montserrat GitHub page. Julieta’s font is also available on Google Fonts.

Prompt

Prompt is a simple, wide and geometric font that was developed to work well with loopless Thai but it’s just as good in Latin alphabet as in Thai! Cadson designed 18 styles.

You can get it on Prompt GitHub page. It’s also available on Google Fonts.

Start designing with your new best friends!

KinoMural 2020: a visual story about camouflage in 4K

2020-10-05T01:13:40.290Z

This year's KinoMural showed an astounding number of visual murals where a lot of young visual artists wanted to tell a story. My story was about hiding reality in structural, abstract forms.

Norbert Kowalczyk's "Camouflage" was shown on KinoMural 2020 edition in Wroclaw, Poland.

Behind the camouflage - visual experiment

My main goal was to hide a three-dimensional form in a two-dimensional representation where the viewer would be hypnotised and then, in the climax they would understand what the picture depicts.

I wanted to lock something truly recognisable in a blink of an eye. After some experiments I decided to 3D-scan my own head/face. The most commonly recognised shape (or symbol) is a human face. People tend to see faces in everyday objects like electrical outlets, kitchen appliances and so many more. That's why I decided to hide a representation of my own face in the camouflage project.

The video description tells what is this all about:

The animation presents an experimental search for the limits of camouflage - where the image sinks into abstraction and where its forms emerge. By separating the communication channels of the image (such as movement, shape, colour, position, etc.) and using only a few (contrast, movement) the subject of camouflage is studied. The task is to partially uncover three-dimensional solids in front of the viewer, which can only be recognised by means of line patterns. Through their flow in relation to one plane, the work has many climaxes in which the image is fully camouflaged and in which the image is most exposed. All the fragments between these points are equally important - they represent the discovery and covering of solids in turn, and the whole closes in the form of rhythmically built tensions.

Initial project was focused on a meditational part/, where a viewer could follow every single line as it moves slowly in a never-ending loop.

Tools used in my project

I tend to use open-source software to cherish it's open nature - my 3D modeling programme was Blender in which I also edited the moving sequence. I also composed music for the whole animation - this part was done in LMMS. I personally love opensource projects and I'd like to share my joy of using community-based software.