Week 5

Helvetica

http://www.davidairey.com/images/typography/helvetica.jpg

Helvetica is a sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 at the Haas Type Foundry of Switzerland, by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffman, first named Die Neue Haas Grotesk. After the War there was a feeling of idealism and designers wanted to renew things and give hope after the horrific event, they saw it as their social responsibility. Type designers were attempting to develop a neutral type face that had clarity and could widely accessible to a variety of companies and agencies. The High Modernist period was broken down and rationalised to make a clear new typeface.

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The designers back in those days had to cut lettering out of steel at actual size, so many typefaces did not have italics and bold themes that many do today. They had to cut them out individually and create many to make production easier, for posters especially. In the film (Helvetica) it is mentioned that computers these days help speed up the poster process, while they used to do only hand drawn work. Posters would take days to design and put together because of the difficulty of many layers, computers can't necessarily do a better design but it is alot faster.

Mike Parker of Haas foundry became interested in Hoffman's work, Helvetica had an interesting 'Swiss-twist' where the letters seemed to have a negative shape that held the inside and outside together, a firm shape rather than having a letter that was commanded by the negative space around, instead it is controlled by the letter. Miedinger was a graphic artist but only did deliveries as Haas foundry, yet came into the design when Helvetica was being manufactured in a way. It was handed over to Stempal, Linotype in Germany where the final reworks and polishing were down. Once realised Helvetica (named as the Swiss typeface) hit off in the industry, it was exactly what designers were looking for, they wanted something with clarity, a neutral typeface that was efficient and it's smoothness created a humanity about it. The popularity of the typeface grew over the years and is still very much liked today.

http://www.lennynaar.com/images/helvetica/helveticaposter.jpg

Helvetica was and is the 'Ultimate Typeface' it has an almost finality about it, it is very legible, effective and convincing for it's magnitude of purposes. The effectiveness depends on the specific typeface used and amongst contemporary society today brands rub off on us and people buy certain things subconsciously because of the typeface and unknowingly have a connection with it, this allows for quick and easy recognition of products and brands that they favour. Many do not know but each typeface creates an emotional response from us and effects us when put into words when we read it.

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Eventually designers wanted to step away from the smoothness of the letters, they saw it as boring and overused...hand drawn type became popular (the 'Lou Reed' album cover is an example of this above). Designers wanted to express themselves through their type and their design of type. Many new emerging designers had no formal training, they just did whatever with type and experimented, this angered the original type designers when people would just ignore the text traditions. All their hard work and success seemed to be ignored by the 'up and coming'. Although many were very talented the originals found them disrespectful in a way.

Bryan Ferry explained that legibility and communication are not necessarily linked, and that there is a thin line between type being simple, clean and powerful or simple, clean and boring. Through the Grunge period of the late 90's designers had to look back to the past and the basis of many typeface families...Helvetica. Looking back to the past but with an understanding from the experiences of experimentation during the middle period. Simple Helvetica was used over the past century throughout society, it had and still has Global appeal.

http://www.sweeting-family.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/detail5.jpg

Many type designers on the dilm Helvetica explained the importance of different typeface families. Many believe an emotional response is essential, Michael C.Place is a typographer who doesn't know the basics of developing a letter but thinks the best design needs to have an emotional response, his idea was that design should stand the test of time. He enjoys the challenge of making Helvetica and provoke an emotional response displayed in contrast or complimented by another material, he believes Helvetica is still fresh it just depends how you use it.

Manuel Kreps and Dimitri Bruni were seen on the film as well, explaining their obsession with Helvetica and now their remission from it. They started out wanted to look back at the elegant designs from the past and enjoyed the rational and refined theme they possessed and understood that too much confusion with a type face becomes over whelming and unnecessary in getting the message across. Through history there are many trends and they believe theres not much further to go, we have the base texts such as Helvetica which many other fonts are based upon. The new typographers will only succeed if they have the eye and a good sense of design, Kreps and Bruni found the closer they got and understood the more they appreciated the type. Nowadays the times are changing and so is the appreciation of typeface. Expression of who you are, of identity is seen through consumer choices and now in visual communication, i.e. Facebook or Myspace pages, where the individual designs their own page according to what they feel represents them accurately.

http://www.skyhighproductions.com/uploads/Myspae_Layout_by_mykalromero.jpg

Helvetica is, as said above, an ultimate typeface and will carry on in society because of its simplicity, effectiveness and accessibility.