HELLO BLOG. Been awhile. Hope you missed me.
So Helvectica. A completely over talked typeface, even with it’s own movie. Thats something, isn’t it? A typeface with it’s own movie.
‘Here, I’m away to watch Helvectica.’
‘Is that not a type face? You’re going to watch a typeface?’
‘No, it’s a movie about the typeface.’
‘Oh.’
Did you ever think you’d be saying that? What makes Helvetica so good, or interesting, that it needs it’s own movie? Is it less about the typeface, and more about the history surrounding the object?
I personally like it, but I don’t think it fair to paint any type face as some mystic font above all the rest – it has it’s negative aspects just like any other. Bottom line is – the type face is colourless. When choosing what font you want to use for a design project, you need to think about what you want your type to say.
Helvetica is like a hollywood style movie – the techniques used are so good, that you stop noticing the type face and concentrate on the message of the words themselves. But like a hollywood style movie, this isn’t always the right technique to use. Like in a horror movie, sometimes you want to bring the audiences attention to the jump cuts, to the bad music, to jar them and remind them, this isn’t reality, but it’s close enough to possibly be real. The same can be said for text. The mood of the font you choose should heavily influence the mood of the text, but should also be influenced on the content of the text.
So if you are creating a horror poster, maybe you would choose a font that is slightly over dramatic and in an older, creepier style to create the mood you want. If you create the same horror content, but in Helvetica, you would lose a lot of the message as Helvetica doesn’t portray any feeling. Comic Sans is an over and many times wrongly used font, and has an infamous name among designers, but this does not necessarily mean it is a bad font – when used in the right context it is very much a good font.
The same can be said for Helvetica – it’s mostly seen as a good font as it can be applied to so many different areas, but this does not mean that it’s the best one out there – when miss-used – although more difficult to do – it can have the same adverse affects as when Comic Sans is miss-used. It’s important to know the context and mood of your design and choosing a font that has a similar feel to suit that. Sometimes that font is Helvetica, sometimes that font may just be Comic Sans. No font is the Bee all and end off, it’s all about choice.
Thats a practical view of the font in my opinion, and also not a very radical one at that. It doesn’t take into consideration the social context of the font that is mentioned in the Helvetica film. That calls into question the need for social context on a font. A font? Can a font really hold that much narrative? Thats a whole other story.
These be share links, yo.
