Helvetica

This was my first time watching the film 'Helvetica' which shares a brief history of the typeface from when it was first designed in 1957 (the same year that Helvetica completely changed the look of adverts) to the present day where it is still the most widely used font in the world. In fact, before watching this film I never realised just how widely used it was and still is with almost every shop sign written in Helvetica. It was said in the film that Helvetica is designed so well that it invites open interpretation which is probably one of the main reasons that it is so popular, because it fits with almost every design possible.

However, all was not happy in the film. There were many examples of designers who disliked the typeface because of its overuse and rejected its use completely. I found these designers work to be much more visually exciting and much more inspiring. Among these were the works of Émigré, many examples of ‘grunge typography’ and the works of Paula Shcer who even went as far as to blame Helvetica for starting the Vietnam War which I found amusing. There were other amusing parts to the film such as the part when the designer (I didn’t catch his name) was talking about his experience designing wedding invites saying it was the most stressful job he has ever had because of dealing with a mother-in-law. Another part I found myself chuckling away to (mostly because of my immaturity) was when I noticed one of the phrases sliced into Stefan Sagmeister’s body read ‘style = fart’.

Throughout the film, the typeface was described as being neutral and efficient making it fit perfectly to the majority of designs. As mentioned before it was said that Helvetica invites open interpretation but doesn’t always have to be legible to communicate the desired mood or message, e.g. when the font ‘Dingbats’, which is made up of various different symbols, was used to communicate how boring and dull a passage of text was. Something which I didn’t know beforehand was that the design of Helvetica was based around the sliced off terminals in the letters, ‘e’, ‘c’, ‘g’, etc. This seems to be crucial in the way the typeface is designed.

I am not one hundred per cent whether I am pro-Helvetica or anti-Helvetica mostly because I am just properly discovering the extent to which Helvetica extends. The fact that this typeface fits almost every mood or feeling inspires me to include Helvetica in some of my designs. However, the ‘punk’ side of me wishes to avoid the font just because it is so widely used and so popular within everyday life, and perhaps look further into those designers (mentioned before) that inspired me from the film.