Screening Notes for "Helvetica"

I'm still in the intro but wow I love the background score.

Helvetica is the most common typeface, it's used everywhere and on anything. It's the most versatile typeface in the world, if it's widespread use is any indication.

I honestly haven't thought much of typefaces. My favorite is Garamond, but that is purely a personal attraction to the way it looks - it reminds me of old books without being illegible. I never took typography so I don't know what types are related and which aren't. I guess I never noticed Helvetica because I never noticed it, never saw how often it was used. I'm aware of Times and Ariel and Calibri due to their default statuses in my computer programs. Comic Sans is infamous as a terrible font. I think I remember someone saying that you can tell if a font is successful, because it works so well with the work that you don't even notice it.

1950s Swiss Style is where Helvetica emerges. The style of the posters they used as examples in this video really appeal to me in their simplicity and clarity of message.
Oh, I love this! This quote, about how a computer does not improve your design, it only speeds up the process.

Helvetica is a bit of a mystery. Mostly it was a generation to generation perfection of an old sans serif font, tweaks made in spurts that lead the modern font. "Helvetica" came about when the longer name ending in Grotesk was said it would not sell well in America. Helvetica is the altered latin name of Switzerland. Helvetica was extremely successful almost as soon as it was introduced.

Advertising went from being flowery and people-focused to being decisive and product-focused. Everything from advertisements to government forms and documents to business logos to street signs is in helvetica. It's simple and easy to understand, it reads as trustworthy and efficient. The context controls the interpretation of Helvetica.

Confusingly for me, I went to my font list on WordPad to see if I could play with the font and experience it myself, and it's not there. If it's such a standard and widely-used font, why would it not be in every word processor ever made?

Aw yeah we're getting into media. Music, TV shows, Movies, Branding - they all use variations of Helvetica. Some designers avoid it because of an abhorance of conformity. "Don't use Helvetica" is a rule that some artists adopt in order to avoid being stagnant. Using Helvetica is seen as agreeing with the ideas of the people who used it before, and when those ideas didn't match up, the typist rebelled.

The grunge typography aesthetic kind of stemmed from this, from people who wanted to rebel against the boring way of doing things at the time. After grunge had broken it all down, then they could return to the classics with a new mindset and really make it work in a different way than it did before.

I love that typography and graphic design is available to more people in the modern day, anybody altering their own blog or social network profile and choosing fonts and colors and spacing is practicing these aspects. I think over time I'm learning that graphic design isn't just about advertising or sending me subliminal messages. It's about communication. And sometimes communication becomes beautiful.