Blayne Sucks

Last weekend I was able to see a documentary called Helvetica. Although most people I’ve recommended it to this past week have been less than enthusiastic in their feelings towards watching a documentary of a typeface, I strongly urge anyone reading this to give it a fair shot. It is a short documentary on something that virtually everyone takes for granted. I guarantee it will give you a new outlook on text.

To back up a couple of steps, I wanted to talk about Times New Roman, which I have have always disliked. I think I pretty much hate all serif based typefaces. (Serif typefaces have ‘feet,’ called serifs, on letters like capital A’s while sans-serif typefaces have none.) Times New Roman was the default font on many word processing programs when I was in high school. As a result, it was the “required” font for many projects and papers that I had to write. In fact, Times or Times New Roman are still frustratingly required for most academic publications. My favorite font to use in high school was Arial. I even reconfigured the default typeface on any word processing program I could get my hands on to Arial. I was never entirely sure why I liked it, but it seemed to get out of my way. I just felt less formal and made me more relaxed when I was writing something.

How does this related to the documentary? Apparently, many type designers feel that Arial is a rip-off of Helvetica! That’s right folks. There was even speculation that Arial would make an appearance in the film as a villain, but I won’t spoil the surprise for you. Microsoft didn’t want to pay the royalties for Helvetica so they made their own “humanist” typeface. (A humanist font is essentially one that is closer to how a human would write the letter than one that appears machined.) Does that not sound like classic Microsoft to anyone else?

More broadly, anyone who loves design or is otherwise detail-oriented would love this documentary. There was a great quote from Paula Scher in the documentary that holds a subtle truth which applies very broadly.

When you come into design at the point that you start out in history, without knowing that you’re starting out in history, very often you don’t have a sense of what came before you, how it got there, and you certainly don’t know what’s going to come after.

What modern technology company has the best reputation with design? Apple. Why? Most people say this is entirely due to Steve Jobs. How did Steve Jobs become enamored with design? Calligraphy. Calligraphy is as old as writing itself. He began to really appreciate at an early age the historic impact of design and communication. Every aspect of your product speaks to the user. This has been critical to their success.

Anyhow, I hope you’ll consider watching Helvetica. They have a blog on their website which is also rather interesting. You might also like Typographica’s Favorites of 2007.