HELVETICA

Watched a film in class this week, it is about a font; Helvetica. I have to say I was really enjoying it. Ok, if you were telling me I am going to enjoy a film about font two month ago, I will tell you that you are crazy. But two month on, I have never been so passionate about font, about graphic design. Suddenly everything I have learned in the past starts to make scene now. I never can imagine font can be so beautiful, can be so expressive. In the past I never look them twice, back then in my mind only graphics are graphic design. Think of somebody sitting in front a desk design font for a living, one word usually pots in my head “loser”. Man, can I be more wrong?

So far Helvetica is my favorite font, properly because I have always been a fan of minimalism, from architecture to design.

The development and growth of Helvetica was very much a product of modernism. Developed by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein, Switzerland, Helvetica had all the qualities to become one of the most successful fonts in the history of font design. Though it was originally called Neue Hass Grotesk, in 1960 the font was renamed the more internationally-friendly, Helvetica - the Latin name for Switzerland.

Helvetica captured the modernist preference for using clarity and simplicity to suggest greater ideas. The fact is that the typeface is so clean-cut and simple means that it can be used as a neutral platform for a wide variety of settings; it is the particular context and content of the messages that convey their meaning.

These days Helvetica is everywhere, as part of Swiss design, you can find them on road sighs, cooperate logs, government buildings, and just let me say it again, they are everywhere. Its success ultimately becomes its problem. Because it is everywhere, so many designs end up really feed up with it.  A famous example of this was when David Carson, a leading proponent of deconstructive typography, produced an infamous edition of his über trendy design magazine Raygun. When a commissioned piece on the musician Bryan Ferry came in, Carson thought it so dull that he set the copy in Dingbats – a typeface used to display shapes and symbols – thus making the article totally unreadable!

I am not saying typefaces shouldn’t be expressive at all, like the “god “of graphic design Massimo Vignelli said, but David Carson? Really?

The invention of language and words only service one purpose that is “communicate”, typefaces are the style of fonts and words, they should have the same function. One day when you find typefaces no longer make scene at all, that will be a tragedy, who ever is doing this, it is considered as cultural vandalism.

Eventually, when the public could no longer handle the often illegible work of designers like Carson, clear typefaces like Helvetica, once more will found new followers. 

Long live of Helvetica! (Ha-ha, only joking)