Establishing Your Voice: Through Typography...

Clean, simple and “machined” by its creator, the typeface “Helvetica” has crept into our culture over the last 50 years. Not unlike your favorite pair of well-worn shoes, we experience both comfort and disdain for this typeface that is both old and new—it shows up in some of the oldest graphic design books available as well as constructivist posters. In modern usage, Helvetica and its contemporaries, such as Helvetica Neue, appears in current day in technologies like Apple’s iPhone.

Oh Helvetica. How we love and hate thee.

Helvetica, a contemporary typeface of Swiss origin. In the first textbook I ever used on typography, it was classified as "one of the "Five Classic Typefaces." Over the years, it has put emphasis ON the content, yet today it is readily becoming THE content—yes, it’s baaaaack.

From storefronts to signage, techno-gadgets to constructivist T-shirts, automobile logos to toothpaste, Helvetica is pervasive and surrounds us like the re-emergence of the 70s tie-die or bell-bottoms. Ultimately, fashion survives, and so does design: as embraced and approved by culture all around us.

Helvetica is a highly geometric, shape-driven, sans (‘without’) serif typeface, reliant on structure, negative space, and the interaction of figure and ground. It is supremely underrated, but defines us—it is all around us.

The structure of the letters helps contain our anxiety, and relax our worries as we navigate our world. It presents nothing unpredictable, yet surprises us with its unpredictability in different contexts.

And Helvetica has simplified our approach. Look at the Coke commercials after its introduction. Helvetica helped remove the clutter of the times, making the message ‘look’ more accessible, transparent and efficient with simpler accompanying photos and graphics.

It made our world a little less noisy.

It truly is a typeface open to interpretation: say everything—or say nothing.

The “typographic voice” of Helvetica seems to defy being easily categorized. When presented in different contexts, it can truly elicit a range of responses that are just as unique as the potential diversity of the viewing audiences.

With uniform strokes of very little variation and large x-height, it’s very clean design makes it very readable. However, without those easy-reading serifs found in most large amounts of smaller, book-sized copy, designers must always be careful to lead the type accordingly, as the eyes will not travel easily if copy is too close (have you ever seen text with ascenders from one line overlapping with descenders from another line? YUK!)

My first experience with Helvetica was in a typography class in New York. As our junior year design teacher Heinz described the letterforms in his heavy German accent, I must admit I had very little appreciation for the typeface. That said, as we were ‘coerced’ to hand-render the entire alphabet with pen and ink, I experienced the forms in a way that was at least helpful for gaining in understanding of the similarities, differences and reasons to use the typeface (or ones like it) before using others. As I hand rendered the letterforms, they became a more unique part of my personal experience.

Helvetica. Check out the movie of the same name. In theorizing about its first invention and appearance on the design scene, a movie interviewee exclaims:

“It just felt so good to be taking something old and dusty and homemade and crappy looking, and then replacing it with shiny Helvetica.” Goofy old brochures became restored and shiny.

Described like the air we breathe… its simplicity is truly refreshing.

And its defiance is still quite the conundrum.

Like the “disco ball” that reappears at nightclub after nightclub, Helvetica shines the light on our experience, adding to the ambience, and forcing us to question all that is right (or wrong?)

Upon the foundation of cultural expressions of the past, culture evolves, and often recycles its own creations, using them in new and interesting ways. The expressions of the past become tools to express ourselves in new ways, and expressing our identity seems to be what technologies like social networking are allowing us to do more and more. We threw away those nasty little ends of the letters—those crazy serifs—and called it good. It fits right in.

We take the old, and reuse. We introduce a little bit of the new and controversial, and we keep going…

Rock on Helvetica, rock on.

m

Creativity: the enlarged self

“Different personality styles have different creative styles. There is no one idea of creativity that can describe it all. Therefore, in collaborating with others we round up, as in any relationship, an enlarged self, a more versatile creativity.”

~Stephen Nachmanovitch

Freeplay, Improvisation in Life and Art.

Infinite variety in an infinite creative system—it’s so exciting when you continue to reveal the many “layers of self,” and as you do so, you may realize you’re not alone.

My creativity is connected to something indescribable, something felt, something experienced, and something uniquely me—yet something not “me.” Collaborative energy is all about the contradiction of that which is uniquely ‘you,’ and that which you channel with and through others, and through what Stephen calls the “enlarged self.”

Case in point…

I recently had a good friend see one of my illustrations on my website. It was an illustration done a few years back, as a gift to someone I was close to at the time. It told it’s own unique story, with symbolism meant for that person at that moment in time. My good friend Rachel made up a short story around it for her son. I would have never envisioned this, and when she told me about it, I was pleasantly surprised, complimented and honored.

She wants to create a children’s book with this story, and we’re now planning our collaborative effort.

Yes, a second book. Wow, seems I’m all about publishing these days. I’m not even part way through my present book about presentations and visual-storytelling!

Anyway, this one will be quite different than the presentations book, and will finally give me an outlet for a long-time yearning: I way to get back to painting and drawing—YAY!

I am quite thankful that Rachel shared the story with me, and that we are going to have the opportunity to ‘go somewhere’ I never anticipated with this art. It’s a foundation for further expansion, something I never anticipated, and more importantly, it’s built upon collaboration.

Ahhh creativity… I’m very excited to see how this evolves!

m

The Movement That’s Missing: learning about reflexes

Some short observations, reflections and streams-of-thought today…

As I work on the new book, and develop some author bio drawings (portraits of the authors), I am reminded about how much I have missed drawing.

I have always felt like I needed a tangible purpose and goal in my sights, otherwise, I just don’t seem to want to do it. 

Ahhh, an ongoing human dilemma: the need to feel “productive.”

Back in the early post-undergrad art school days I used to be so curious, and so in touch with the implicit nuances of “the movement” involved in drawing, as well as the “way of seeing” required for creating shapes and forms. Just like the movement of drumming, the muscle memory in the bones slowly came back into my subconscious thought patterning, and lines and shading became easier.

I ride the creative bike again.

I have slowly had to leave something behind: the “thinking” way of visualizing faces that came with my work at Rochester Institute of Technology. Drawing faces through proportion is useful information, believe me, but it also took me to a place of thought that was apparently not appropriate—for me. I guess I just don’t want to think about some things. I just want to do. Apparently “doing,” and the experience—tied the movement—were much closer to my heart.

Ahhh… The ‘doing’ and feeling productive.

And back to these portraits… it’s great that I am doing these simpler drawings. These line drawings have very little shading and keep my reconnection with form simpler. I also remain “in the movement,” movement that seems to permeate everything I do. 

Typing, navigating my iPhone, drumming, and the most obvious things like running and walking all rely on movement, reflexes and muscle memory. Funny: reflexes can release humans from thinking about the action (otherwise, we would eventual drop into analysis paralysis). I caught myself checking and deleting emails on my iPhone the other day, navigating screens quickly—with little to no conscious thinking… what fun! Reflexes can be very helpful (especially in life-threatening situations)…

Think about all the things you do that don’t involve thinking! Maybe for a few minutes every day, then of course stop. Why bother with this? It can provide some useful perspective. Is it always productive? Are you missing anything? Has the “thought-reflex” created a potential ‘skip’ in the record you didn’t catch, one worth exploring, or maybe even worth changing?

Cultivated Curiosity…

I hope my curiosity for these kinds of things never ceases, because seeing actions and thoughts at various levels allows awareness of possibilities and useful revisions to my actions (aka change). It builds flexibility and even responsibility too.  At a “grass roots” level, I am moved to never take things for granted, and be thankful for my abilities. I enjoy the desire to mix it up and change it all at will. 

Just because any particular action or movement doesn’t feel natural doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t do it, that’s what practice is for. Of course we all find things we gravitate towards, just remember that the reason we gravitated towards them to begin with, was because we tried something new—even walking. And then we were changed forever…

Now that is what life is all about!

m

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P.S. An interesting side note about drawing…

Today, as I continued sketching the authors, I started my own portrait, and realized that the experience of drawing me was different than the others. Apparently I seem to know me better. Imagine that! Perhaps I look in the mirror too much? The movement of drawing my own familiar facial features created a rather indescribable and unique response—or at least a little bit of introspection. I'll post it when it's finished.

P.P.S. In living life, I am learning more and more about change. As I do, I realize there is more and more to learn. So a quote to help me ‘keep it straight’ just came across my desk:

“The purpose is learning, not changing. Something may change you when you learn, but that’s a by-product.”

~David Bohm

http://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/ios-productivity/id6007?mt=8