Following up on
a discussion begun in September 2020. This time around, the focus is Helvetica Ultra-Compressed and its knockoff, Swiss 911 Ultra Compressed.
Also, the commentary is going to wander a bit, because like the previous installment, TV space-adventure shows past and present are involved.
If you were a
Star Trek fan back during the late 1980's and most of the 1990's, you knew this typeface almost on sight, because about halfway through
The Next Generation's run, Starfleet had switched over from Compacta Bold + Compressed and at least one lesser-known font to this one for their
LCARS user interface screens.
Deep Space Nine and
Voyager also made
heavy use of it for the same reasons. Swiss 911 UC was probably easier to afford at the time. I haven't asked the question of graphic designer/tech advisor Mike Okuda, to be honest, of how the switch happened and why.
Both Compacta and Helvetica/Swiss are - to my eyes - legible, which is what you want in a font that Starfleet's decided to make part of its operational standards kit.
Other knockoffs have been made that were easier still to buy, or just download as freebies in some cases. I'd argue that the ease of that made entry for thousands of would-be graphic designers a trivial matter.
But it started with that particular weight and style of Helvetica.
This past year or so, the TNG/DS9/VOY timeframe has been revisited by way of
Picard and more recently,
Lower Decks. The latter enthusiastically dives back into that style choice. Whether the fact that
Lower Decks was created as an animated series plays into the decision and to what degree, I don't know and don't care.
Picard, being set about twenty years
after the start of
Lower Decks, went a different way. I found out
what the choice was via Twitter: Tungsten from Hoefler and Co.. This was a surprise. More recently, I got to see a video explaining the choice of Tungsten over returning to the classic font, which comes towards the end of this
Trekzone interview:
Excerpting from
this history of the Net's three most popular fonts' journey to that popularity...Arial grew in popularity both because of its selection as a Microsoft core font and its design as a sans serif. It was, quite simply, the most accessible sans serif font available to most people with computers, and sans serif fonts were growing in popularity with the increase in computer usage. Although Helvetica is the superior sans serif font to many, Microsoft chose Arial in part because the licensing fee for Helvetica was too expensive. I understand the need for the additional weights that Tungsten affords...and the price asked by Hoefler is...likely problematic -
at the moment - for a lot of graphics-focused fans. Including myself right now. My complaint - is that the right word here? - is with Hoefler as a business concern, not with anyone else for any other reason.
Not with Andrew Jarvis. He made the best choice possible for the job he had in front of him (and one I hope he keeps, especially since that will allow him to work with Geoffrey "Star Charts" Mandel himself next season).
It's not that I don't want designers to get paid for their work. I do. I'm just on a tighter budget at this point. If I were to win the LottoMax jackpot on, say, next Tuesday night, I'll likely pay the full US$199.00 for the basic eight-weights Tungsten kit and stop commenting on the subject altogether.
Also, I wonder if the foundry's management understands how large a potential customer base they can now reach out to. Trek fans are a big crowd. Multinational, also multilingual...
Oh.
Oh.And now I'm starting to understand why they might want or need to keep the price tag as is for the time being. Because Starfleet
also has to be multilingual. If you want to adapt a script to other orthographies...and Tungsten is still Latin-only for now, right?
Anyway, one further thought: Tungsten is now a cartography font, in part thanks to its usage in
Picard. I am tempted to expect that the next revision of either
Stellar Cartography or - my personal hope -
Star Charts will include maps made with Tungsten. Hoefler will have to amend
this promotional campaign accordingly.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
