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Response to Helvetica movie
Justice Okeke
10/29/2014
Response to the film Helvetica
Helvetica was a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looked at the proliferation of one typeface as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film was an exploration of urban spaces in major cities, the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type. Varying type size is one of the best ways to differentiate content. Hierarchy can be achieved in other ways too. Using different sizes of type to achieve it and different styles; for example, all-caps. The spacing between letters and shapes create a sense of order and asymmetrical balance. As mentioned in the film Helvetica the white and space between the letters are important to help shape the letters and hold them in place. Furthermore, in the movie Helvetica Post-modernism in graphic design was said to be a more recent movement and a response to modernism.
If modernism was interested in legibility, post-modernism was interested in expressive design and typography, rather than transparency and clarity. Post-modernism tends to ignore rigid restraints of any kind. It rejects the anonymous and corporate nature of modernism and instead embraces pop culture and a more free form style in everything from illustration to typography. In Helvetica, this particular typeface was seen as the embodiment of modernism, and was fully embraced by modernists for its comparative simplicity and how its character can change according to its context. In the movie Helvetica, type designers, graphic designer, and people educated in the art of fonts discussed the global reach of the font Helvetica. I was shocked to see how many places Helvetica was used in the movie documentary; in advertisements, street signs, shop windows, books, computer desktops, bags and even t-shirts all over the world. It’s all around me and I never really noticed it. The universality of this font is where the designers elaborated most and came to butt heads in the movie. Some designers said that its simplicity and functionality makes it ideal for communicating anything and everything like it is the chameleon of fonts; familiarity and originality living simultaneously in words.
In my opinion, I genuinely have no strong feelings either way. Perhaps it is because I am still a student and not as invested in graphic design as a whole as these professional designers who have been working in graphic design for much of their lives. I have always seen any typeface, including Helvetica, as a tool, and there is a time and a place where it should be used, and there are some situations where Helvetica is not optimal. Modernism and post-modernism is a similar situation, although I can attribute that to my inexperience, I do not
identify with either movement in particular. Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day. Colours and pretty boxes might help but different sizes of type used consistently throughout the pages will signal loud and clear to the readers the relative importance of the pages clarity. It also means that if the readers are in a hurry, they can quickly pick out the important bits and that could mean that they stay longer and read on. The film was shot in high-definition on location in the United States,
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