without wanting to stir up this debate (i mean that genuinely, and i won't respond to attempts to drag any discussion in that direction):
without access to typophile's archives i can't remember when the all the arguments on the site about whether helvetica is an inherently fascist typeface happened. the best i can guess is that some of them were in 2010 as a reaction to arguments elsewhere in the blogosphere/social media about the origin of the star wars logo. but perhaps there was another thread, in 2007, in reaction to paula scher's comments in gary hustwit's helvetica? can anyone confirm or correct this?
in case you're curious, this is all for background in a piece i'm writing on modernist typography in germany under the nazi regime. not planning on mentioning any names—just looking for a year, maybe even months.
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Purely from the singular perspective of an old coot, I would say that the Nazi tag is unfounded and accused way after the fact. AG was certainly in use at the time of the 3rd Reich but not by any means a branding face. Helvetica came out in about 1957, well after the War was over. Helvetica, as the name suggests, is a reflection of Swiss type. Even AG, which was highly used by the Ulm School people, was seen as too left wing for the Nazis who thought the Ulm founders were communists. Fractur was much more in association with the Reich but not limited to it. To say, "Swiss Style", "International Style" or "Corporate Style" would be fair.
Also, many of the Typophile dialogues were more impassioned than informed. It might be a fun anthropological study to revisit the Typophile threads but...
More from Suzy Rice about it here: http://suzyrice.com/the-star-wars-logo-design-page-one-of-two/
mark, thanks—that first link reference is five years before when the later argument over the star wars/helvetica/fascism connection erupted. but it shows why the topic could have been on people's minds already.
https://archive.org/web/