These people go nuts for some Helvetica

I must admit I don’t think I have ever put that much thought into typography. Apart from in Graphic design there is usually not that much room for flirting with new fonts, and we are usually chained to a Times New Roman, 12, double spaced appearance.

The one thing I enjoyed most from the documentary is remembering font and printing as a hand made beautiful craft. I think if you asked most people they would say that every font was made up by Apple or Microsoft or the people who put together Word. However I think remembering the craft is the only way to see the sense and purpose behind creating a type, because in doing that you can see just how much thought went into creating that type, it was not a happy accident and it was a way to move a mind set forward, as they said ‘it spells out loud and clear ‘modern”.

The documentary however did not turn me into a Helvetica super fan, but did what it was really supposed to do which was to make you aware of just how important type is. Type is used to convey a certain message, and deliver a message for the companies that use it. Helvetica offers a cool, calm, modest, straight to the point, no BS, no fluff, no decoration message, however it can be seen as cold. There were two quotes throughout the documentary that I thought depicted both sides of the Helvetica coin very well, it was describes as ‘The Perfume of the city, something you don’t notice much but would miss if it wasn’t there’, and yet on the other side it was argued that ‘just because something is legible doesn’t mean it communicates or communicates well’.

I feel like Helvetica could be most compared to Formalist art, it is not there to spark an intense emotion, it is not supposed to provoke the inner struggles of your being, it is simply meant to sit there and provide a straight forward clean cut appearance. If you want something a little fancier and off the wall, why don’t you give Wingdings a try.