Does anyone know how/why Helvetica wound up the most appealing font? It's not the most appealing, but it is quite a neutral font which I'd argue is the base of

Does anyone know how/why Helvetica wound up the most appealing font? It's not the most appealing, but it is quite a neutral font which I'd argue is the base of its appeal - there are no serifs, no whimsical curves, and it is associated with Modernism so it gives an impression of quiet authority going back to fonts like Univers and the International Style. That makes it appropriate for content that wants to be taken seriously, while not seeming too stuffy or traditional, so it has become popular for business use as well as in setting adverts, and of course it lends itself well to computer screens. Doubtless it will fall out of favour at some point, I have no doubt it will remain popular, but it's unlikely to maintain its hegemony. It seems to be a primal reaction rather than a learned behavior. Helvetica looks the best to me because it looks the best, not because someone else said so. What an incredible assertion. Without your culture, all the books you have seen, the adverts you have seen, the computers you use, your appreciation of helvetica would be entirely different. I'm sure there are cases where nature overcomes nurture, but in this case context is almost everything. You wouldn't even know what these squiggles represented without picking up a huge amount of cultural baggage associated with them, without listening to what other people say. Our opinion on fonts and matters of style is based almost entirely on cultural baggage.