Developed between 1974–84 by Team’77 (André Gürtler, Christian Mengelt, Erich Gschwind) following the invitation of Alfred Hoffmann of the Haas type foundry to reimagine Helvetica for phototypesetting. Released in 1980 for Bobst Graphic/Autologic and later Linotype.

For many years a digital version of Unica was available from Scangraphic (and Elsner+Flake, 4 weights plus italics) but it was pulled from the market due to a complaint by Linotype who claims the Haas rights. In 2004, Stephan Müller modified a copy for the use in an artist book. [Lineto] In 2008, Cornel Windlin did a custom Semibold for the the Schauspielhaus Zürich identity, used in 2009–10. Later, Louise Paradis made a revival named Unica Intermediate (unreleased) while doing research for the TM retrospective.

Lineto worked with the original designers and Maurice Göldner to release LL Unica77 (7 weights plus italics) on March 7, 2015.

Toshi Omagari created another digital version and extension released by Linotype as Neue Haas Unica (9 weights plus italics). The first style, Ultra Light Italic arrived in 2014, the others appeared on MyFonts on March 18, 2015.

Alberto Moreu’s Studio Pro (Think Work Observe, 2018) is inspired by Unica, too.

This entry covers the original phototype version, the pre-2015 digitizations, as well as all unidentified interpretations.