Starting to make the rounds this week is a feature put up by the always fun FontShop, "To Helvetica and Back," which offers up alternatives to the most famous of typefaces. Granted, it's a pitch so you'll buy fonts from them, but who says a sales pitch can't be fun? That's why most people watched that stupid, dumb football game on stupid, dumb Sunday, right? Here's one:

Paralucent: The first text sans serif from Rian Hughes, a master of stylized display faces. It still shows signs of his distinctive hand, from the big round 'i' dots and wedge terminals to the daring lowercase 'g'. Paralucent was designed to be more consistent than Helvetica, and a solid modern workhorse of a font, elegant enough for headline and robust enough for text.

Why it's not Helv: More square than round. Extra large x-height. Extra tight spacing (loosen it up for small copy).