«Suggested»? By whom?
Or more importantly: for what kind of setting?

sorry but what you mean by "what kind of setting?"

There is a built in DNA to every typeface that suggests the optimum spacing. By looking at the counter space (negative) in the letters and the thickness of the strokes (positive) you create a rhythm of positive and negative patterns. Space between words & lines should help balance that rhythm. Bold faces generally should be set tighter to retain their density and lighter faces should be set further apart to ensure their lightness.
Helvetica has an almost perfect figure/ground relationship (balance of positive/negative space) so it's hard to screw it up.
The Telus ads tight track the Helvetica ultra light which is counter intuitive.
It should be very loose to enhance that lightness.
But, now that it is a familiar part of our vernacular, we accept it - like "all justified" newspaper columns. This doesn't mean it is right, just that, like bad grammar, it's acceptable.
We too readily accept the familiar as good or appropriate.
Typography is like music and as Massimo Vignelli said, "it's the space between the letters that count"
Musical notes are only defined if there is a pause so that you can absorb the note or notes of a sequence.
In typogragraphy the space between the strokes of the letterforms, between the words, between the lines and paragraphs define that rhythm.
That's what we aim for.
The average reader has about 3 seconds to determine if they are going to pay any attention to what you have set. Our goal as designers is to bring them in, hook them and keep them involved from start to finish.
We are in the information distribution business.
Comfort is the key.
When you jar a reader from their reverie by changing rhythms, forms, or structures you can move them away from the intended focus - or worse lose them entirely.
Most designers don't understand this and design for the purpose of display rather than for imparting the information to the reader - which is our ultimate goal.
This is all subjective.
Read a slew of books and you'll find theories as to why you should set everything tight or loose regardless of the letterforms.
Adrian Frutiger, when building towards his Univers (and with many typefaces under his belt) remarked that, in terms of type design, he had come to the realization that every stroke he put on the page in forming the characters had less to do with designing the typeface and letterforms than it had to do with removing the negative (white) space of the page and that that ws his revelation in balance.
Tracking, as a whole is an ill used tool. Kerning is much more important in terms of getting the letter shapes to relate to each other. AFTER you have kerned your text appropriately, then the tracking adds an openness or tightness to your text.
Ultimately, it's all about rhythm.
Positive/Negative & balance between them.
I hope this helps.

Guau! that was a very helpful info! Thanks for taking the time in such a generous reply.

Cheers,
S

What I meant by «what kind of setting» was primarily: text or display?
When you set some large titles, or maybe a logo, you can take all sorts of liberties, also with tracking, to make the type look good. When you set longer/smaller text to be read however, readability has to take precedence over looks. Simply stated, track a font too tight and you risk making it harder / less comfortable to read (as the white space between the letters matters for reading). Lastly, it also depends on point size: The smaller your setting, the looser the tracking has to be in order to be comfortable.

Now, obviously Helvetica (like any font) comes with a «built-in» «recommended» tracking. (That's why I asked – recommended by whom?) I assume the thought that it «has to» be tracked in comes from the trend (which has been around since the 1970s) that states it looks better when it's tighter; but it's really not very functional. Especially because Helvetica already is rather on the tight side for text settings.

Do look at the pattern of whites. Maybe even more importantly, if you're setting text, print out variants, and read them, and see what doesn't only look good, but also feels good. :-)

Hi Altaira, thanks for the good insight on the Helvetica. I will be using the Helvetica Light as text and Helvetica Heavy as tittle. It is interesting to know about the trend in the 70s to use Helvetica with very tight kerning. I have checked some very nice Annual Reports by BMW using Helvetica, and they use a kerning that goes somehow -25 for the Helveticas Heavy.

I also watched a tight kerning in the movie poster for the film “Helvetica”

Thanks for the good feedback,

Sebastian

By the way, I just discovered Josef Brockmann work on Grids. There is some very good tips on Helvetica kering there.