It was rather a skirmish between a bunch of young designers, like your age now, who were called New Wave, Postmodern, Swiss Punk, whatever, and believed it necessary to reject the status quo for something freer and more contemporary. Doing that meant criticizing old-guard designers, who believed design should be simple—clean on tight grids and Helveticized.

Helveticize your nostalgia with Regret Sans, Regret Light, Regret Bold.

Simple and memorable. I don’t think the old Unimark wordmark was any kind of work of genius, it was one more company to Helveticize, and it reflected a visual dogma of the time.

Although there was no mention of any change in the official typeface some of the sample illustrations used Helvetica instead of Standard. Whether actual signs were prepared with Helvetica as a result is unclear, but Helveticization was around the corner.