Helvetica, the iconic font, first redesign in 36 Years

It's been used by brands such as American Airlines, Panasonic and Toyota. It's all over the signage in the New York City subway system. Even Google, Apple and Netflix used it for a time.

Helvetica is ubiquitous around the world.

Now, after 36 years, the widely used — and widely controversial — font is getting a makeover.

The upgrade was designed by the the Massachusetts type giant Monotype, which controls licensing for Helvetica. The company has updated each of Helvetica's 40,000 characters for the digital age, offering three new sizes designed to work on everything from billboards to the tiny screens of a smart watch. The updated font even has a new name:  "Helvetica Now."

Like many changes, though, some people are skeptical.

"If I'm perfectly honest, my first reaction was, do we need another Helvetica?" says Charles Nix, type director at Monotype.

The altered typeface became a trending topic on Twitter.

"Half the people were like, 'Awesome. It's dead. Finally! I'm so glad it's gone. It's the worst,' " Mitch Goldstein, a design professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology,  says. "And the other half of the people were like, 'Helvetica is incredible. It will never die.' "

So why is Helvetica such a polarizing typeface?

"Helvetica is one of those typefaces that you love or hate," graphic designer Sarah Hyndman explains. "You either use it all the time, it's become a staple, or you feel like you've grown out of it, and it's a little bit too ubiquitous."

"There are lots of foibles in Helvetica like the way the letters space," she says. "The letter 'L'looks too much like the number '1'."

Helvetica was not the most versatile font in the toolbox, admits Nix. Now, he says, that's all changed.

"Helvetica was seldom used for captions and small text because it was a little cramped," he says. "Instead of being micro-challenged, we've made it like a micro-champion. So when you set captions in the new version of Helvetica, it really sings."

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Robot-Powered Pizza, Anyone?

By Bernard Marr

At Zume Pizza, a Mountain View, California (Bay Area) enterprise founded in 2015, humans do all the prep work for the ingredients, but then the robots take over repetitive and potentially dangerous tasks. When a customer places an order from Zume’s app, Doughbot starts preparing their specific order by turning a dough ball into a pizza crust in a mere 9 seconds. Robots Giorgio and Pepe take over from there by applying the sauce to the crust and pass the pie on to Marta, a robot who spreads the sauce to the corners of the crust. Humans step back in to put the toppings on, a task that is challenging to automate due to the different textures and sizes toppings come in. Then robots Bruno and Vincenzo put the pies in and out of the oven respectively. Customers get to enjoy a freshly made 14-inch pizza that costs between $10 and $20 with no need to tip.

Zume is also changing pizza delivery with its “Baked on the Way” technology. Delivery trucks with six ovens allow the company to make 120 pizzas per hour—baking when en route to a customer's door. The company collects data and uses predictive analytics that helps determine what day and time people are most apt to order pizza. They are then able to stock the delivery trucks with the types of pizza that are expected to be ordered so they are in position to respond quickly when an order comes in. Zume plans to expand by scaling its proprietary technology platform that includes logistics, infrastructure, and operations to help others in the food industry introduce similar automation to their operations.

As restaurant robots take over tasks from chefs, bartenders, servers and delivery drivers, what’s in store for the humans they are replacing?

“Automation exists to improve the quality of human lives,” Zume CEO Alex Garden said.

As with other industries, the hope for automation is that people are freed up to do higher-value work while robots are there to do the repetitive and dangerous work. It is expected the jobs of restaurant workers will change with the introduction of automation, but so far there’s no robot that can replace human interaction—yet.

 From Forbes (edited)