Versions of the font that are now commonly used are descended from an upper-case only design called Schmalfette Grotesk (German for bold condensed sans-serif) by Walter Haettenschweiler that was published in 1954.

[8][9][10][11][12] The font Haettenschweiler now bundled with much Microsoft software is a digitisation credited to Eraman Ltd. and Monotype Imaging.

Counters are minimal and normally fully enclosed, a common feature of 'Grotesk' typefaces, while apertures are very narrow.

The problems are particularly large in a lower-case (which, as previously noted, Haettenschweiler himself declined to design), where the fine detail of the characters mean that strokes run closer together than in the capitals.

[16] Several fonts were created in the same style in the early-to-mid 1960s, including Helvetica Inserat and British imitators Compacta and Impact.

Geoffrey Lee, who designed Impact in 1963, wrote that "many of us admired the vitality and colour of what we knew only as Schmalfette, and used it by old-fashioned cut and paste.