I have been using computers since I was in elementary and during that time whenever we have an essay to pass or a project where we have to do magazine cutouts or print words to paste on our scrapbooks, we always make sure that we attract the viewers starting by the fonts to be used. Since before I knew that proper font selection is essential in order to add aesthetic value on the words where we often use decorative fonts. Before I never distinguish any major differences between a serif and non-serif fonts and when we had our typography lesson during our multimedia class, the discussion didn’t changed my perspective on dealing with non-decorative fonts. But everything changed after our instructor made us watch the documentary film, HELVETICA.
The documentary film was about typography and graphic design centered on the typeface which is also the title of the movie, where its first name was Neue Haas Grotesk. The film was able to change my point of view in dealing with typefaces. The film was able to express that typefaces did not only contain mere strokes or weight neither that it can’t only form a letter or express a word but it actually contains a story where Helvetica was, if I may say, the prime mover of the typography industry during the age of modernism. The director was able to collect information from credible people like Massimo Vignelli , Rick Poynor and other world-renowned typographers where it intensified how promising and great was the impact of the said typeface during the 1950s.
The director was also brave enough to include in the documentary film the decline of Helvetica. Its popularity became its own disadvantage – it became dull and boring. The film was able to shift from uniformity of modernism to the “free” post-modernism where typefaces with no sense of uniformity and was hard to read that was made by typographers who thought that it was their time to make something unique. The clash between the modernism people with the post-modernism young people was also shown during the final quarter of the movie. But, as we may alls observed, Helvetica still is one of the kings of typefaces in print, logo, graphic or motion design. I recommend people who have interest to be future designer especially in the typography field to watch the movie to have a clear view on how to deal with typefaces in various conditions and projects.
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