Max Miedinger

Max Miedinger (24 December 1910 in Zurich, Switzerland – 8 March 1980, Zürich, Switzerland) was a Swiss typeface designer. He was famous for creating the Neue Haas Grotesk typeface in 1957 that was renamed Helvetica in 1960. Marketed as a symbol of cutting-edge Swiss technology, Helvetica achieved immediate global success.

Between 1926 and 1930 Miedinger trained as a typesetter in Zürich, after which he attended evening classes at the Kunstgewerbeschule there.

At age sixteen Max became an apprentice typesetter for Jacques Bollmann at a book printing office in Zürich. After four years as an apprentice, Miedinger enrolled in the School of Arts and Crafts.

At 26 he went to work for an advertising studio called Globe, working as a typographer. After ten years at Globe, Miedinger gained employment with Haas Type Foundry as a representative. In 1956 Miedinger became a freelance graphic designer and about a year later he collaborated with Edouard Hoffmann at Haas on the typeface Neue Haas Grotesk, which would later be called Helvetica.

Laufer, David Calvin Dialogues With Creative Legends, New Riders Press, San Francisco, , Page 98.

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