‘Smelvetica’ Is The Legendary Typeface Reimagined For ‘Your Worst Enemies’
Screenshot via Tholman
The reason ‘Helvetica’ is still so popular is because, while probably overused, it’s stupidly legible and never ugly—but one designer has made it his mission to make it both unreadable and irksome.
Tim Holman, who calls himself a “tinkerer, tuner [and] tamperer,” has reworked the classic typeface into something that looks like it has fallen from grace. It’s ‘Smelvetica’—’Helvetica’ with disastrous kerning.
To create this “morbid monstrosity,” Holman opened the original ‘Helvetica’ typeface from his files, fiddled with its fonts, and shifted them around their guide grids.
“This had the desired effect of ruining their beautifully crafted kerning, as such, creating ‘Smelvetica’,” he wrote in a blog post.
So, who might this typeface be perfect for? “[Y]our best friends, or your worst enemies… The kerning has been specially altered, to be, well, bad, terrible, awful and painful,” the designer said on GitHub.
Tholman has made the end result free to download. What it does is turn every visible chunk of text that’s been set in ‘Helvetica’ into its objectively ugly alter-ego.
Preview the kerning-crippled remake and head over to the ‘Smelvetica’ microsite to seriously annoy the designer in your life.
Fun to see Smelvetica getting a bunch of love this weekend ~ https://t.co/IHhA6o4t4s ~ Definitely the best font to represent the current times ;) pic.twitter.com/c1StaSMi4Z
— Tim Holman (@twholman) September 9, 2018
Screenshot via Tholman
[via Hacker News, screenshots via Tholman]
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