50 Years of Helvetica
Just watching an interesting edition of BBC’s “Imagine” on typography, celebrating 50 years of Helvetica. The programme looks at how this “ultimate typeface” became the most popular in the word, arguably equalled but never bettered as a design artefact. Indeed the Museum of Modern Art, in New York devoted an exhibition to it this year. I find the aesthetics of typeface fascinating-the dropdown menu of various fonts on any Word processing package has made us aware of the sheer variety of typefaces available, often with Romantic, quasi poetic names like Verdana, Ariel, Tahoma and Garamond. bUt of course typesetting-and selecting apt, memorable names, goes back well before computers and the new generation of electronic fonts.
People react and respond to typefaces in different ways and letter styles can affect customer attitudes and expectations- a clean, sharp type face will reassure customers about the quality of a product; Gothic or Old English conveys antiquity and medievalism; while Broadway shouts, well, Broadway and Showbiz. Comic Sans is chatty, light hearted and friendly.Perhaps one of the most iconic typefaces is Johnson Sans, the one designed by Edward Johnstone and adopted by London Underground.
The programme looks at how the design of typography has changed over the last 50 years-some designers argue that typeface can be subversive, sending out subliminal and overt messages. Recently there has been a growth in Grunge type, reacting against the perceived uniformity, globalisation and standardisiation of clean cut Helvetica. In fact some commentators feel that Helvetica, the typeface of choice of major companies, is an expression of capitalism, although others argued it has is a democratic tool, made more widely available by PCs and the internet.
I watched that programme too – very interesting. The idea of the biography of a font is unusual in itself. Listening to some of the enthusiasts talk, it struck me that there seems to be a kind of font synaesthesia where people intuitively feek that the look of the word matches (or doesn’t match) the meaning. Surely though, I thought, no single font can suit a word and its opposite.
I thought the funniest bit was where one designer simply laughed at the look of some terms in the Helvetica font e.g. first date – refuting it with the simple claim, “this isn’t a first date!”