Helvetica’s evil twin, Hellvetica, will haunt your nightmares
“We wanted people to see this in the wild and be like, ‘What the HELL is wrong with my computer?’” says the typeface’s creator, Matthew Woodward.
Hold your favorite graphic design tome close. We now know what the classic typeface Helvetica would look like if it came from the underworld. Yes, it will keep type enthusiasts up at night.

Zack Roif and Matthew Woodward, associate creative directors at the international advertising agency R/GA, along with art director Emily Stetzer, and copywriters Namwan Leavell and Chloe Saintilan, have released a new typeface available free to download called Hellvetica, and it will make all your worst kerning nightmares come true. While each character has the same form as the classic typeface it’s riffing on, Hellvetica utilizes inconsistent, variable spacing between each letterform to give an overall effect that something has gone terribly astray. Nope, that wasn’t a mistake. You might just say it was intentionally erroneous.
I asked the Roif and Woodward why they played with Helvetica in particular. Was it simply because it’s punny? According to Roif, who developed the concept, their initial reaction to the pun (“we definitely all shamelessly laughed”) was part of it, but it was also a sign they could be on to something bigger. As a design classic, Helvetica was ripe for a shake-up. “Flipping what is widely considered to be the most iconic ‘good design’ font of all time on its head is about as evil as it gets in the design world,” Roif says.
Free to download at https://hellveticafont.com/.