After much heckling from my graphic design friends, I finally took the time this weekend to watch Helvetica, a 2007 documentary primarily about the font of the same name. I highly recommend it to anyone who doesn’t realize how much typeface impacts their everyday life, and even more so for people who make typeface decisions.
If you’re a designer, you need to see it. If you’re a writer, you should see it. If you’re a company bigwig, I implore you to see it. If you like Comic Sans or Papyrus, you’re beyond help – so don’t bother. (It’s on Netflix Instant, for those of you that have it; and likely available for rent at any local library.)
Helvetica is a sleek and simple sans serif typeface developed by the Swiss in the late 50s during the Modernism movement. It’s the most famous of typefaces and, without a doubt, the most often used. (Some of you may know its sibling “Arial.”) Here’s a quick rundown of .0001% of the companies that use it and, in some cases, haven’t changed their branding in 50 years because of it: 3M, American Airlines, Jeep, BMW, Jackass, The Office, JC Penney, American Apparel, Target, NASA, Apple, Motorola, and Panasonic.
While a documentary about a typeface may not sound exactly riveting, I can guarantee it will change the way you look at, and think about, fonts. It will make you look at your logos and letterheads differently. It will make you design ads, posters, websites, etc. differently. In short, it will make you think. As any good piece of media should.
What’s all the fuss about a stupid font, you may ask? Well Helvetica is significant in the histories of visual communication and American culture. It came about after WWII, when people wanted a simple, quiet, hermetically sealed lifestyle like they saw on Leave it to Beaver. During that time, typefaces in ads and branding were often hand-drawn, quirky, and inconsistent. When Helvetica came, it not only gave a visual sense of sleekness, comfort, and uniformity, but it also pushed ads towards effective simplicity. For instance, look at this Coke ad from yesteryear, and this other one from this year. The problem is, some people look at Helvetica today as an overused model of uniformity, globalization, and capitalism.
So set aside 70 minutes for the film, and several hours for reflection on your own use of fonts. Your company’s branding will probably be better for it.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
The Soviets loved Helvetica too. Myself, I still like Courier because it makes the columns align nice like they did on mainframe terminals.
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I’ve always been of the opinion that the font depends on what it’s being used for and the qualitative traits you’re going for. (Of course, that line between simple/effective and expressive/cheesy is a fine one.)
But your love of Courier is similar to my soft spot for Georgia when it comes to body text in documents, websites, articles, etc.
I like the condensed, bold yet classy, European style sans-serifs myself (like Bebas.) I also dig fonts inspired by or related to highly legible road signs, such as Blue Highway or DIN.
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Good call. DIN is basically the German equivalent of Helvetica.
G,
Fixed-width fonts like Courier have their place, especially when coding for mainframe or a more modern .Net language. I would say that a fixed-width font is great for when you need to be sure of data consistency or correctness when you are entering or proofing. But in most cases, I would adhere to the practice of using a proportional font, unless your need dictates otherwise. I simply googled “when to use fixed width fonts” and the results seem to agree.
“In a proportional font (such as Times or Arial), the characters are different widths. Typesetters have always used proportional fonts, and they look much more professional. Always use proportional fonts unless you have a specific reason not to!
” — http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/cumming/WordForLinguists/Typography.htm
A
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I went to the Apple dev group meeting last Tuesday…was astounded by how 1988esque the xcode default fonts were. Hurt my eyes. Visual Studio is a pleasure in contrast.
I checked out Zappos vs Target. Zappos definitely more inviting even for us middle-agers.
But Helvetica still seems to find a way into Zappos pages.
http://www.zappos.com
http://www.target.com
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Ok Andy, next time you come asking for me to build you a website I’m going golfing.
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