Helvetica

I have thought a great deal about typography since watching the movie Helvetica. It may even be safe to say that the film changed my life.

Before watching this film, I never thought much about typography. Typically for papers we had to use the requisite Times New Roman or Arial, so there wasn't much opportunity to choose anything else. Any time I wrote something for my own use, I would use any font that didn't remind me of term papers, but I didn't really consider the work that went into creating those fonts or the intended use of the type.

The film pointed out how much Helvetica is used in our everyday lives. I never realized it before, but Helvetica is everywhere. From shop windows to our phones, our lives are constantly impacted by this type.

I have to admit that at the beginning I was skeptical. These people seemed utterly insane going on about a font like that. As if it could make that much of a difference. But it really can. It is just a clean, easy to read, attractive font that is so subtle that most of the time it can go unnoticed. It is a font that can communicate a message without getting involved, unlike other fonts, where you notice the type before you notice what the message says.

Initially, I agreed with some of the naysayers who encouraged thinking outside of the box instead of following the cookie cutter use of the same type. To an extent, I still agree with them. Designs should be creative, and if a different font works better for a project, then by all means use it, but it shouldn't be pushed too far off to the side because the results that come from using Helvetica can be surprisingly good.

I was was having trouble selecting a font for the magazine spread, the first project we worked on after we saw the film, so I decided to give Helvetica a try to test the theory. I ended up loving the way the spread turned out and have used Helvetica somewhere in every project I have done since.