The years passed, and in 2012, there still was no legitimate version of Haas Unica around. This made waves and before long, Unica became a revered tool of choice for keen designers, among them Norm, Cornel Windlin, Laurent Benner, Jon Hares, and Gregor Huber & Ivan Sterzinger, to name but a few. As it wasn't available to buy, he sourced a black market copy, made minimal changes to it and discreetly used it for an artist book. In 2004, Berlin-based designer and Lineto partner Stephan Müller came across a digital version in a Scangraphic specimen book. As avid users of type, we often wondered why Haas Unica wasn't available on the market. Haas Unica disappeared, and its designers' appeals to Linotype for a digital reissue bore no fruit-it remained buried for close to 30 years.īut it was not forgotten. Haas, one of the world's oldest foundries with a back catalogue of sheer excellence, was taken over and terminated in 1989. Four years after launching Haas Unica, Haas’ business partner Stempel was sold to Linotype.
In rapid succession, companies went bankrupt, were taken over, stripped of their assets, and sold down the river. The shift from analogue to digital turned the industry upside down. It had taken six years from commissioning to foundry release, and when it came out, the world was ready to move on. Haas Unica fell into the gap of this transitional period. The personal computer was on its way to radically alter the design and printing professions, and in 1984 the Apple Macintosh promised a new dawn for type design. Their thorough analysis of four formally related typefaces (Akzidenz Grotesk, Univers, Neue Haas Grotesk and Helvetica), later published in the document «From Helvetica to Haas Unica», served as foundation for the synthesis of the brilliant new typeface, its name an amalgam of Univers and Helvetica.īut by the time Bobst/Autologic (for their Eurocat system) and Linotype (for their Linotronic range) came out with Haas Unica, the days for phototypesetting were numbered. He invited the prolific type designers André Gürtler, Christian Mengelt, and Erich Gschwind to investigate improving Helvetica for phototypesetting, and to propose a new typeface optimised for the dominant technology of the day. In 1973, Alfred Hoffmann of the Haas type foundry had enough. However, Linotype prevented Haas from producing Helvetica for the now prevalent phototypesetting technology, and as a consequence, Haas was denied any major share of its global success. Haas, a relatively small enterprise depending on cooperation and licensing deals, licensed it to Linotype for worldwide exploitation, who adapted it and turned it into the fabled Helvetica. First presented as Neue Haas Grotesk, in 1957, it was a sensational success. Helvetica had been secretly developed at the Haas Foundry in the mid-1950s, against the will of Stempel, their majority stakeholder. It's the dark side of Helvetica's bright success story.
The tragic story of Haas Unica is one of technological progress, economic pressure, corporate powerplay, bad timing, and unfortunate coincidences. And released for a fading technology at a time of transition, it was soon relegated to undeserved obscurity. Unica was the typeface that finally delivered what Helvetica had only promised, at a moment when, in a bizarre twist of fate, no-one was looking. Some see Unica as the pinnacle of modernist type design, arguably the most modern and the most Swiss typeface: the idea of a «pure medium», a «neutral carrier». Lineto / Team 77 writes: We are proud and honoured to release Unica77, created by Christian Mengelt of Team 77, the original authors of Haas Unica. The underlying thread is a huge fight between Haas and Linotype, with on the Haas side, the Swiss outfits Team 77 and Lineto, and on the Linotype side, the corporate heavyweight. This story is taken from the Lineto web site in 2015, just after the digital revival Unica 77 (Christian Mengelt) was published by them. TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on
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