02 — Masthead · Est. 2019

A magazinebuilt likea timetable

Helvetia began as an argument in a Zürich print shop: that a quarterly about design should behave like the thing it admires — punctual, ruled, and unsentimental. No photography, because photography lets the words off the hook. No trend reports, because trends report themselves.

What remained was the grid, the letterform, and the patience to measure both. Ninety-six pages, four times a year, set in two typefaces and one temper. We are read in forty-one countries by people who notice when a folio drifts.

Chronology

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2019
Issue Nº 01, “Ragged Right”. Six hundred copies, stapled by hand in a Kreis 4 print shop. Sold out in nine days.
2020
The desks are named A through E. Six years on, we have never needed an F.
2021
First foreign-language reprint, in Japanese. The grid survives translation; two captions do not.
2023
The redesign. Eleven weeks of work. Readers noticed a 2-point change in the folios and nothing else. Correct.
2024
The Compendium: issues 01–12 in a grey cloth slipcase. The spine aligns when shelved in order. Of course it does.
2026
Issue Nº 14, the one you are reading — on a screen, with which we have made a fragile peace.

The editors

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Margrit Lendi

Editor-in-Chief · Desk E

Trained as a cartographer; edits like one. Believes every paragraph has a north.

Bruno Achermann

Creative Director · Desk B

Has redrawn the grid four times. Three of the four were quietly reverted.

Ines Roth

Senior Editor · Desk A

Owns four thousand specimens of Akzidenz-Grotesk and is not finished.

Yves Padrutt

Editor · Desk C

Reads buildings left to right, like everyone else, but admits it in print.

Salome Wirz

Editor · Desk D

Files at the deadline. Never before, never after. The copy arrives angry and clean.

Felix Brunner

Diagrams

Our only image-maker. Works in 0.25-point increments and bills accordingly.

Käthi Oberli

Production

Knows the press operator’s birthday. The magazine has never shipped late.

House rules

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01The grid is the message.
02No photographs. A diagram must earn its column.
03Red is a consequence, not a decoration.
04Type is set tight; opinions are set tighter.
05Every folio is checked by hand, twice.
06White space is load-bearing.

Disagree with any of the above? Write us a letter — 04