“The emerging International Typographic Style was exemplified by several new sans-serif type families designed in the 1950s. The geometric sans-serif styles, mathematically constructed with drafting instruments during the 1920s and 1930s, were rejected in favor of more refined designs inspired by . . . Akzidenz grotesk. . . . In 1954 a young Swiss designer working in Paris, Adrian Frutiger, completed a visually programmed family of twenty-one sans-serif fonts named Universe. . . .
In the mid-1950s, Edouard Hoffman of the HAAS type foundry in Switzerland decided that the Akzidenz Grotesk fonts should be refined and upgraded. Hoffman collaborated with Mex Miedinger, who executed the designs, andt their new sans serif, with an even larger x-height than that of Univers, was released as Neue Haas Grotesk. When this face was produced in Germany . . . the face name was [changed to] Helvetica, the traditional Latin name for Switzerland. Helvetica’s well-defined forms and excellent rhythm of positive and negative shapes made it the most specified typeface internationally during the 1960s and 1970s.”

—Phil Meggs & Alston Purvis, Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, 2006.