[Movie Monday] Who Knew Typography Could Be So Interesting?

Actually, I used Arial to create this, but it's practically the same font. Windows PCs come with Arial; Macs come with Helvetica.

I’ve been sharpening my graphic design skills lately, and as I’ve read books on improving the look of my Powerpoint slides, the visual display of quantitative information, and basic typography, I grew interested in a documentary film my brother mentioned to me last year called Helvetica.

“Helvetica?” you might be asking. “Isn’t that a font?”

Not only is Helvetica a font, but it is the font that you’ll see in most graphic design since the 1960s. See, back before personal computers, typesetting and font design was a very complex process — you had to create very detailed illustrations of every character and then ship them to type foundries, where steel pieces would be created for printing presses. Because of this, there was a great need for a simple, “everyman” sort of font that not only was readable and stylish, but neutral.

“Yeah, but why should I care?” you might ask. “All I have to do now is fire up a computer, and I can use any font I want.”

True, but it never hurts to learn about why Helvetica (and copies like Arial) became a visual standard. And it’s even more interesting to see how Helvetica has been used in the creation of logos we see every day:

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