5 Free Helvetica Alternatives

There is doubt that Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann’s “Neue Haas Grotesk” has become the 20th Century’s most well-known typefaces. The strong, solid appearance of Helvetica allows it to carry a universal appropriateness in a way that other fonts can’t seem to balance. The sheer amount of style variants that compliment Helvetica’s standard typeface makes it an obvious candidate for any project.

This is the problem, however. It’s become a little too obvious, in fact. These days it’s almost a guarantee to see the font appear multiple times between a trip to the shops. Although yes – it’s a beautiful font, it does little for businesses to distinguish themselves from an already abundant amount of visual communication around us.

For a whopping $35 per style, Helvetica can quickly burn right through the pockets of anyone looking to start or redesign their business in today’s economy. Which is why we’d like to offer you a peek of the sleekest fonts you can use for free!

1. Montserrat

Julieta Ulanovsky designed a typeface that brought back the eloquence to urban typography. This is one of our favourite font families to use because of its simplistic modern aesthetic as well as a wide variety of weights and glyphs. This easy-to-read typeface is suitable for almost all modern day business in both digital and print formats. The entire Montserrat library is available to download for free from Google Fonts. 

2. Raleway

Another free and fantastic Google Font that lends a more personal touch to the visual style of the paragraph. Matt McInerney’s thin weight design gained more flexibility with the additional styles added by Rodrigo Fuenzalida and Igino Marini. Although it’s no Montserrat, we definitely recommend Raleway for its sleek neo-grotesque character set.

3. Roboto

Domo arigato, Mr. Christian Robertson for designing this strong mechanical typeface. Though largely geometric and rigid, Roboto is a typeface to be taken seriously. Its clarity and sharp design demonstrates the font’s unwillingness to obscure the reader’s fluidity when reading. We recommend this font when you’re keen to be up-front and with your audience.

4. Work Sans

Wei Huang designed a typeface family based loosely on early Grotesques. Work Sans is an optimized digital business font that is easy to read and does just as well on print publications. The many sizes and variants of Work Sans make the font incredibly diverse in use of paragraphs as well as headlines. 

5. Ubuntu

Last and certainly not least is the Ubuntu Font Family. The technical font design work and implementation is being undertaken by Dalton Maag. The modern san-serif style of the font is more solid and communicates a little more warmly than most fonts. This font is excellent for body and header styles for web and print advertisements and may work much better with businesses who provide a homey type of product or service.

With the rapidly expanding world of online advertising, even the smallest details in your visual communication can make the biggest differences to your audience. Choosing the right font is a good step in the right direction for setting the tone of your company. With many beautiful fonts costing small fortunes, it never hurts to cut corners on prices, either.

We hope this small titbit of information can go a long way for you, too!