don’t blink

I finally got to sit down and watch Helvetica. I was starting to feel like the only person working in graphic design who hadn’t seen the movie! I really enjoyed it. I thought I would hate it. But it was a really beautiful film on one of my favorite subjects, type. I love typography. It is the part of graphic design that really turns my crank. I love the other stuff to but oooo, there is just nothing like a really beautiful ampersand.

As far as typefaces go, Helvetica is one of my favorites, but I haven’t mastered designing with it yet. I worked with a young lady from Germany her name was Janine and she was an intern at the company used to work at, she knew her way around Helvetica. It was like one of the designers in the movie said, it was as if it was born into her, like some kind of second language. It was funny because she was so good with the modern minimal stuff, the Helvetica stuff. But when we asked her to do something that was warmer, or to use a serif typeface it was like the bottom would fall out.

I really enjoyed the banter in the movie, about what the real role of typography should be in design. Is it the crystal goblet that you see the design through, communicating clearly without emotion but with razor sharp clarity or is it emotional can it sing, can it be the design? Should the word dog should it bark? I have to say when I was in school I thought it should bark, I was a big fan of the post-modern movement in design, the David Carson, Neville Brody he anti-Helvetica movement. But now, I find myself closer to the swiss, grid, goblet theorist.

I guess it just depends on the day, on the project, on the client. But I do enjoy the looking and thinking of it. Here is a list of some of my favorite typefaces in no particular order:

• Avenir
• Requiem
• Sabon
• Bodoni
• TradeGothic
• AvantGarde
• Goudy
• Helvetica
• Gill San