Max Miedinger - Biography
This entire biography was sourced from historygraphicdesign.com and can be viewed hereMax Miedinger was born on Christmas day, 1910, in Zurich Switzerland.
When he was 16 years old, he became an apprentice typesetter in the book printing office of Jacques Bollmann in Zurich.
After four years of apprenticeship in the book office, Miedinger entered the School of Arts and Crafts, Abendkurse in Zurich.
In 1936, at the age of 26, he became a typographer in the advertising studio of the Globe department store chain. He worked at the Globe for ten years and refined his skill as a typographer.
After ten years at the Globe, he became a representative for the Type Foundry Haas in Basel Switzerland. This is where he would make his mark on graphic arts history, when in 1957 he revised a typeface called Akzidenze Grotesk—an old san serif font designed by the Berthold foundry in the late 1800s. His newly designed san serif was named Neue Haas Grotesk. Little did he know that, in the later 20th century, his neue sans serif typeface would become the default typeface for most software packages under its new name, Helvetica.
http://www.hca.uws.edu.au/student/101180/student/tuesday_2-4_roman/thomas_hayes/project1b/biography.htm
Max Miedinger's "Helvetica" was a revolutionary typeface and is still considered influential. The typeface is all over the world because it is so easy to read. It's design is flawless. You don't notice it at all, which is exactly the point. Miedinger's "Helvetica" is useful for my 2D course because it is an amazing example of design that is meant to be invisible to the eye.
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