Why did Helvetica end up on everything from airlines to subway signs?

Helvetica ended up everywhere because it was designed to be neutral, and a neutral typeface suits almost any message. The Swiss designer Max Miedinger drew it in 1956 and 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry, whose director Eduard Hoffmann wanted a sans serif that could compete in the Swiss market as a neutral face that should not be given any additional meaning. It has a high x-height, strokes that end on horizontal or vertical lines and tight spacing, which gives it a dense, solid look.

It arrived in a style that valued the same thing. The International Typographic Style, often called the Swiss style, emphasizes simplicity, clarity, readability and objectivity. Its hallmarks are asymmetric layouts, a grid, sans-serif type such as Helvetica, and flush left, ragged right text. In 1959 the typeface was adapted for Linotype machines and renamed Helvetica, Latin for Swiss.

Then companies and computers took it up. Corporate identity programs contributed substantially to its adoption: Lufthansa used it in 1962, and in 1967 Massimo Vignelli chose it for American Airlines. In the 1970s and 1980s Linotype licensed it to IBM, Xerox, Adobe and Apple, making it a core PostScript font. Macintosh computers included Helvetica, and Windows included Arial, a metrically compatible clone.

Not everyone loves this. Some type designers criticise its ubiquity, and designers in the 2007 documentary Helvetica linked it with authority and corporate power. Its defenders, like the designer Wim Crouwel in the same film, answer that a typeface should carry no meaning of its own, because meaning belongs to the text.