It’s not “Helvetica Nu.” It’s “Helvetica Noy-yeh.” Sparked by my teenage love of German cars and a stint in high-school German classes, I long ago learned to love the Germanic economy of language. I always considered it wasteful that the French would put a perfectly good “T” at the end of a word, and then not pronounce it. The Germans, however, don’t waste letters. Porsche is pronounced “Porsh-eh,” not “Porsh.” It’s Noy-yeh, not Nu.

This has been a public service announcement

At first glance, you may have read this as “Hotel HelvetiCa,” just because we’re all so accustomed to the common font name. Our brains just want to fill in the “missing” C.

Helvetia was the Latin name for Switzerland in the Middle Ages. The label HELVETIA can be found on Swiss coins and postal stamps, while the abbreviation “CH” stands for “Confoederatio Helvetica,” the Latin version of “Swiss Confederation” (hence the CH sticker on Swiss cars and Switzerland’s top level internet domain, .ch.)

This is the Hotel Helvetia, in Lindau, Germany, on the beautiful Lake Bodensee.

The Font Bureau, Inc. has filed a $2 million lawsuit against NBC over unlicensed installations of fonts, including Bureau Grotesque and Interstate.

Apparently, NBC used purchased fonts on many more computers than the original license allowed, and also used fonts which had not been purchased.

More information here.

Guess we can look forward to a lot of creative uses of Times New Roman in upcoming NBC advertising.

PS: when’s the last time you read the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) for the fonts you own? (And I do mean own. You do, don’t you?)