Helvetica

I am not going to lie, I thought a documentary about font was going to be extremely boring.  However, I really enjoyed this documentary.  The history of Helvetica was more vast than I could ever imagine for a font.

What I found really compelling was how Helvetica changed the face of marketing. Although the guy explaining about Coca-Cola was WAY too in to it, it was extremely interesting.   The finality and clarity of Helvetica made marketing products easier.  Until this documentary, I never noticed how much Helvetica there was in world. Seriously, it’s everywhere. And now, I can not unsee it.

While Helvetica may have been new a revolutionary when it first debuted, I feel like that using Helvetica now is the taking lazy way out.  Yes, I get it, people like it, it’s familiar, it’s easy to read. Yeah yeah yeah.  I feel like Helvetica has set the stage for so many new fonts to be used and there are so many great fonts that can be used instead of Helvetica.

Although I’m not super crazy about Helvetica, I’m still glad I watched this documentary.  I feel like this was worth while for all of us to watch since we will either be designing graphics, web pages, logos, etc.  I feel like learning about this is like learning about the different art theories that we just got through.  We need to know where we’ve been in order to full comprehend where we are now.