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
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