Helvetica

First off, I have to start by saying I was baffled that a documentary was ever made about a font…not even fonts in general, or typography in general, but one specific font. I was skeptical going into it, but I actually really enjoyed this.

I liked the comment in the beginning that we have the ability, like cancer, to “kill virtual disease with design.” It’s something I haven’t thought about much – that a logo, advertisement or other branding material can be ruined by the font that’s used. But then again, have you seen Comic Sans or Lucinda? Yeah, that makes sense.

One more side note about this documentary – I finally learned the difference between Serif fonts and Sans-Serif fonts! Yes, it is completely embarrassing that I never knew the difference beforehand considering I used to help lay out newspapers and have a background with writing. But until this documentary, I didn’t know. Probably should have Googled that.

I think this documentary will make me look at fonts a bit differently. When they were talking about comparing the curve of an “O” relative to the straight line of an “H”, that’s just something I had never thought of before, that there’s actually a bit of a science behind typography. I think the creation of Helvetica made sense in terms of creating a neutral font. “The meaning is in the content of the text and not the typeface.” Nice work, Max Miedinger!