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Part of the beauty of Helvetica is that people typically don't think about it. It's everywhere and it's a subtle typeface. That's why many brands use it in their wordmarks.

For example, see Helvetica and Neue Helvetica in the logos of BMW, 3M, Gap, American Apparel, Jeep, The NBA, Lufthansa, Target, Motorola, Verizon Wireless, McDonald's and Microsoft. There are many others I'm sure.

Now if you had said Papyrus, I would tend to agree with you.



But all of those logos were designed decades ago, and it was a perfectly reasonable typeface for logo design. The reason it has been used so often is, of course, that it is a very well designed font. But the whole point here is that its ubiquity makes it generally a poor choice for new logos. An aesthetic does not exist in a vacuum, and the cultural context of Helvetica is that it now looks generic.


It was only a matter of time before someone brought up Papyrus because Comic Sans hate is so over.




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