I will admit I do have a
bit of an obsession when it comes to fonts. Not in that I love them all or use
many of them, but in the sense that I am very particular about which ones I use
and what they can bring to a project or even take away. Helvetica is one of the
fonts I used most often and have grown to admire over the years. I believe for
me it started back in high school when I worked on the yearbook staff. For the
first time I was really exposed to the world of graphic design and started
thinking about typography.
It doesn’t get much
better than Helvetica. I love clean lines and for things to be perfectly
organized, and Helvetica does that for me. For example, the thin sleek
simplicity of Helvetica light is an amazing achievement in my opinion. It
evokes a feeling of class and style. It’s chic.
As Michael Bierut stated
in the film, Helvetica, it is much
more than just a font. Helvetica is a vehicle for saying what you want to and
getting the message across to people. It’s nothing more and nothing less, it
doesn’t get in the way and it’s isn’t messy; it’s just your message.
But even with my
appreciation for typography and fonts, their origins aren’t something I’ve ever
really thought to consider. Of course I can recognize many of them in various
designs, commercials, advertisements, etc. As the young graphic designer,
Tobias Frere-Jones talked about in the film, once you begin working with typography
and it’s something you understand and are aware of, it can begin to take over
your life in a way. For instance, his example of how he remembered one specific
restaurant was because it was located near the drycleaner with the horrible
font on their sign. It’s things like that which you become more aware of and
stick out in your mind when you work with typography.
But why all these fonts
were created in the first place and how they have been used historically hasn’t
ever crossed my mind. If find it very interesting that Helvetica is 55 years
old, that’s older than my parents! I suppose I never realized what the
production process of things like ads and magazines was like before computers
and modern printers. The film Helvetica really opened my eyes to how old the
fields of graphic design and advertising are and where my future career
actually originated.
Helvetica was created in
1957 and developed by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffman in Switzerland. Never in
a million years would I have guessed that Helvetica’s first name was Neue Haas
Grotesk, or that it was later named after the Latin word for Switzerland “Helvetia.”
But I definitely have
come to agree with designers like Massimo Vignelli and his take on Helvetica.
It’s something iconic, yet simple, it changed the world of advertising and graphic
design. It’s something that yes, may be over used but that’s only because Helvetica
is such an amazing font!
