Helvetica at 50

The Washington Post today ran a wire story about Helvetica‘s fiftieth anniversary. It is hardly my favorite typeface — I’m more of a Frutiger lad — but because of its endemic use and particularly in the local Metro system for waymarking, I think of this Swiss import as ours. Local yet universal. Perhaps I should have saved this sermon for Pentecost.

And can you tell the difference between Helvetica and Ariel? A quiz. (I couldn’t.)

But it also gives me an excuse to point to a really cute (and liberal licensed) Flash animation featuring the matchy international travel pictograms, which could equally be entitled “The Adventures of Helvetica Man.”

Airport (Iain Anderson)