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

The Pepsi Challenge...or...design without context

When I was a kid, I really liked pop—soda, fizzy, whatever you want to call it—namely Coke. Later, I adapted my taste to new developments in pop… new Coke didn’t work for me, but other new flavors, like Cherry Coke, hit the spot. As I grew older, I strived to moderate my high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) intake with diet versions.

Let’s talk a little about advertising, design, and figuring out what people like…

Consider two cases, relating to design context, as well as my aforementioned love for soda or—er— Pop.

1. In his book, Blink:The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Malcolm Gladwell discusses how “New Coke” held up to Pepsi with “The Pepsi Challenge.” The Pepsi challenge actually failed miserably for both New Coke and Pepsi. The single biggest reason: context. It failed to consider that a “sip test” (one single sip of each product) might not be accurate for anyone who would buy pop. Would they normally buy a whole can on lunch break? Would they buy a case, and take it home for the kids? Who would be drinking it, and how much would they drink? Question: How complex and complicated can it be, to find out what a customer really thinks?
2. Steven Heller (a designer, art director and author of many books, whom I deeply respect) presents the challenge of design, in discussing a fuller design context: building a car is the analogy. Internal and external environmental factors, as well as the actual target audience must be validated. The user interacts with the gauges and controls of the car, our own height and body size/movement are involved, and things like the tires of the car and the signage on the highway come into play. The experience is determined by all of these systemic variables. Question: What other potential products and services (these are variables) effect your present client’s products or services?

This “system,” with all these variables, is quite complex. And the success of the system is often time based, with results often occurring over time and needs changing over time. Success can also depend on what’s going on, in and around the neighborhood cultural block, or all the way out to the international scene. Oh, and how is success actually measured???

WOW. Ok. Slow down... 

No need to take on the world, it could get a little overwhelming...But there are so many variables involved when establishing design context. It's an on-going process, this discussion of process and context! I generally engage in the client-designer relationship as a way to engage my curiosity, my sense of adventure, and my ultimate desire to “design value” for the products and services of customers and their audiences. I ask myself: What’s going to create the most value for the client over time, and what might affect the audiences in (hopefully) positive, productive, useful ways?

How can you design greater value for your clients? I’ll have some suggestions centered around this and the gathering of valuable information next time… I have vowed to keep my posts shorter, and as useful as possible.

:)

m