HELVETIA.

Studio für Gestaltung — Zürich — Seit 1962

Zürich · Limmatstrasse 264 · Est. 1962

Order, made visible.

Founded
1962
Columns
12
Typefaces
1

HELVETIA is a design consultancy. Since 1962 we have organised information for institutions that cannot afford to be misunderstood: transit networks, pharmaceutical laboratories, public museums. We use one typeface, three colours and a twelve-column grid. Everything on this page sits on an 8-pixel baseline — press G and see for yourself.

Selected workArbeiten · 1962—today

Three engagements, three decades each. We do not take work we cannot keep for twenty years. Hover — or tap — a client to see the poster.

1 — Line diagram poster, VBL network relaunch, silkscreen, 90.5 × 128 cm, 1968.

ManifestoManifest · Written 1962, unrevised

Five sentences, pinned above the door since the studio opened. We reread them before every project and after every mistake.

  1. Design is not decoration. It is the organisation of information.

  2. The grid is not a cage. It is the agreement that makes freedom legible.

  3. Whatever can be removed must be removed.

  4. One typeface used with conviction beats six used with doubt.

  5. The designer is not an artist. The designer is a servant of the message.

Working principlesArbeitsprinzipien · How the studio decides

Every disagreement in sixty years has been settled by one of these six paragraphs. There is no seventh.

3.1

RasterThe grid

Twelve columns, 24-pixel gutters, an 8-pixel baseline. The grid is decided before the content and never renegotiated by it. Where something sits is a fact, not a feeling.

3.2

WeissraumWhite space

Empty space is not unused space. It is the loudest element on the page, and the only one the client cannot ask us to make bigger — because we already did.

3.3

TypografieTypography

One family, one scale, ratio 1.25. Hierarchy is built from size, weight and position — never from ornament. Flush left, ragged right, as text is written and read.

3.4

FarbeColour

Black carries the message. White carries the black. Red is a signal reserved for the one thing that must be found first. Three colours, and red is rationed like fuel.

3.5

ReduktionReduction

We charge for what we remove. The first presentation shows what the work looks like; the second shows what it looks like with a third of it gone. The client always picks the second.

3.6

ObjektivitätObjectivity

The work must survive the death of its designer. No signature, no mood, no fashion. If a poster from 1968 still boards the tram unembarrassed in 2026, we did our job.

The studioDas Studio · Limmatstrasse 264, 8005 Zürich

Second floor, north light, one long table. The Linotype is gone; the argument about ragged right is not.

HELVETIA was founded in April 1962 by Rudolf Aeberli, a typographer trained in Basel, and Margrit Steiner, an architect who had stopped believing buildings were the only structures worth drawing. Their first commission was a timetable. Their second was the same timetable, redone properly, for free.

Today the studio is fourteen people and one typeface. We still set every job on the same twelve columns Aeberli ruled onto tracing paper in 1962 — the ones you can summon right now with the letter G. New commissions are taken twice a year, in January and August, and only when we believe the problem is real.

Rudolf AeberliFounding partner · Typography · 1962

Margrit SteinerFounding partner · Systems · 1962

Beat KrähenbühlPartner · Signage & wayfinding · 1987

Anna OdermattPartner · Editorial & screen · 2009