Helvetica

I definitely enjoyed the movie about Helvetica. From watching it I learned that it is a Neo-grotesque sans serif, and modernist style. It derived from the Swiss style of the 1960’s and its original name was Akzidenz-grotesk. It was designed by Max Miedinger. The word “Helvetica” comes from the Latin word for Swiss.
It surprised me how often Helvetica is used in everyday life and how type has become such a big part of life that we hardly notice it anymore. It also surprised me that it’s still being used as often as ever, even though its 60 years old. It seems to be timeless.
It made me laugh the way each of the designers analyzed Helvetica. Some of them slatted it, saying it has only a few uses. Some of them found it funny how often it’s used and how it can seem to be adapted to fit many different styles/circumstances/situations.
I discovered a few designers during watching this movie, some of which I already knew and some of which I didn’t but would like to know more about.
-Mathew Carter
- Eduard Hoffman
- Herman Zapf
- David Carson
- Neville Brody
- Michael C. Place
and Push-Pin studios.
The designers speaking in the film, some of them went into great detail about the technical analysis of the font but most of them spoke about its emotional meanings/connotations. For example, how Helvetica, like most fonts has a rhythm to it, much like handwriting. How it’s a neutral font and can be used for many different things to communicate different meanings/emotions. How it’s almost a default typeface (Arial default on pc’s – Helvetica copy) How it’s the most commonly used typeface (ultimate typeface) and how people keep looking for ways to improve it or make it better, but there are none. It was also mentioned that it’s used a lot on street signs and how it’s not as legible as other fonts (maybe serif fonts?) but it’s used anyway because its recognisable and looks nice.
It was also described as a font that commands the reader – anything that is typed in Helvetica feels like an order. Helvetica was also mentioned as having personality, like most fonts, it portrays feelings and is beautiful by itself (type as design).
Clearly a great deal of thought had been put into the design of how the font would look on paper, how the counters (negative spaces) would look. The horizontal terminals. The contrast of thick and thin within different letters.
This movie has helped me to identify different aspects of type design to analyse if I were to speak about type in the future I would start by typographically analysing it and then look at its uses and meanings. I do agree that Helvetica in all weights is a beautiful font. I also agree that its timeless, has many different uses, its neutral and the font itself is a design. However, since listening to all the thoughts and views on it in the movie is has made me think that designers maybe just get lazy and know that Helvetica will most likely look good on their design/look modern/timeless, therefore spend less time looking into different fonts to use because  Helvetica is the most commonly used.
Since studying Graphic Design and type, I only recently because aware of  how often Helvetica is used in everday life, although before that I was aware of its existence I didn’t notice it as much as I do now.
I think now that I’ve learned so much about Helvetica, I’ll think twice before using the “default” font just because it in itself is a design, and maybe broaden by font choices, but still use similar style sans serif fonts.