The Helvetica font family is everywhere. It’s used on everything from subway signage to federal tax forms to advertisements for a diverse group of companies, including Harley-Davidson, Oral-B ...

Until 2015 it was the default font across the iPhone operating system. NASA uses it extensively, both in space and on earth. So when Helvetica gets distorted, it’s unsettling.

Helvetica, arguably the world’s most popular font, was created in 1957 by Max Miedinger and Edouard Hoffman. It was designed primarily to address the faults of its predecessor sans serif fonts ...