The second one only shows a big glass of Coke and ice, with vapor bubbles on the glass. The first one features a smiling family and curly cursive lettering. “That must have felt like you had crawled through a desert with your mouth caked with filthy dust, and then someone offers you a clear, refreshing distilled icy glass of water … it must have just been fantastic.”īierut then demonstrates his thoughts by flicking through two contrasting adverts for Coca-Cola, one before Helvetica, and one after. “Can you imagine how bracing and thrilling that was?” Bierut asks. The designer Michael Bierut is explaining why Helvetica had such a deep impact on advertising and corporate branding in the 1960s, imagining how remarkable it must have been for an identity consultant to have taken a traditional company like Amalgamated Widget, which was previously represented on its letterheads by a goofy script typeface and a line-drawing of a factory belching smoke, and then sweeping it all away in favor of just one word in Helvetica: Widgco.
#HELVETICA FONT TYPES MOVIE#
The best section in the movie occurs a third of the way through. The film also tracks the font’s genesis, talking to its key surviving creators, none of whom could really comprehend how such a clean little alphabet got so big. Then come images of BMW, Jeep, Toyota, Kawasaki, Panasonic, Urban Outfitters, Nestlé, Verizon, Lufthansa, Saab, Oral B, The North Face, Energizer, and on and on.
![helvetica font types helvetica font types](http://www.identifont.com/samples2/adobe/Helvetica.gif)
His film examines how the font took over the world, opening with shots of the font in Manhattan–on the Times Square tkts booth, Bloomingdale’s, Gap, Knoll, the subway, mailboxes.
![helvetica font types helvetica font types](https://www.typewolf.com/assets/img/fonts/aktiv-grotesk-font-sample.png)
Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica movie would suggest you do. But do you need Helvetica to conduct contemporary urban activity? That’s harder to answer. “Do you need type to live?” The answer of course is no, not in the way one needs food and water. So he read The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, set in Electra.Īfter he undertook his non-Helvetica day, Highsmith posed himself a philosophical question.
#HELVETICA FONT TYPES TV#
In the evening he thought he’d watch TV but the controls had Helvetica on them. Inevitably, there was Helvetica on his credit cards, too. He was late back home because he couldn’t consult the timetable, and had to be highly selective about his cash, as Helvetica graces the new U.S. At work he had, in advance, deleted Helvetica from his computer, but he couldn’t–obviously–browse the Internet. It’s ubiquitous because it fulfills so many demands for modern type.Īt lunch he thought he’d try Chinatown but had to switch restaurants as the first had a familiar-looking menu. The subway was out of the question, though to his relief he found a Helvetica-free bus. He couldn’t read The New York Times as that had Helvetica in its tables. For breakfast he had Japanese tea and some fruit, foregoing his usual yogurt (Helvetica label). Most of his clothes had washing instructions in Helvetica, and he struggled to find something that didn’t he settled, eventually, on an old T-shirt and army fatigues. His troubles began as soon as he climbed out of bed. He might have to walk into New York City from its suburbs possibly go hungry all day.Įven if you groan at American Apparel’s sexism, the company gave Helvetica a sex appeal that it’s never had before. He wouldn’t take any Helvetica-signed transport, nor buy any Helvetica-branded products. Whenever he saw something spelled out in the typeface he would have to avert his eyes.
![helvetica font types helvetica font types](https://www.fontmirror.com/app_public/files/t/1/featured_image/2020/01/featured_2114.jpg)
As a type designer himself, he knew it would be a challenge. You have little choice but to breathe it in.Ī few years ago, a New Yorker called Cyrus Highsmith put his life on the line by trying to spend a day without Helvetica. The typeface even inspired a compelling and successful movie (Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica), whose premise is that on the streets of the world, the font is like oxygen.
![helvetica font types helvetica font types](https://www.linotype.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto/https://image.linotype.com/cms/neue-helvetica-typesystem_comp_545_d13313i55.gif)
Helvetica is a font of such practicality–and, its adherents would suggest, such beauty–that it is both ubiquitous and something of a cult. Helvetica and Univers were perfectly suited to this period, and their use reflected another pervasive force of the age–the coming of mass travel and modern consumerism. You could sit in your Bertoia Diamond chair (Italy, 1952) and read about a forthcoming concept called Ikea (Sweden, 1958), while all around you buildings began to get squarer and more functional. The two fonts appeared at a time when Europe had thrown off all shackles of postwar austerity and had already made a strong contribution to midcentury modernism. They would sort out not just transport systems but whole cities, and no typefaces ever looked more sure of themselves or their purpose. What is it about the Swiss? Or, to be precise: what is it about the Swiss and their sans serif typefaces? Helvetica and Univers both emerged from Switzerland in the same year–1957–and went out to shape the modern world.