Helvetica

Alright this is going to be a design related entry! Just like colours, every designer have their favourite font (typeface) YES! and more often than not you'll here most of them will scream


at your face. It is either that or Univers font type. I do not understand why on earth they would all go for something so erm boring not to mention almost 70% of the entire artist world would go for the same Helvet (talk about creativity). I prefer grunge and handwritten (non-script like fonts) I love messy I hate structured. And I never ever understood Helvetica until now...

Just as a few days ago, I come in posses of a documentary of helvetica. 90minute of pure solid documentary on Helvetica and after watching it I begin to get why people like Helvetica, Not because it is pretty or things like that, but it is very well structured, clean, organised. I am sure most would not believe the history of Helvet and like it because it is a social status that we infact are designers and we like Helvet.

This is the dvd video that I watched. Of course I only can watch on the computer because I did not actually buy the dvd :P It is too expensive for me.

What is so special about Helvet? I wish I could tell you but it is of course better that you get your eyes on the film about design and about font type. Of course I can tell you that This font is already 50 years old and it is still in the mouths of people.

One of the common problem is that people always mixed up arial and helvet. Yes friends, arial is a direct rip-off of helvet this is because helvet is too expensive and so microsoft decided to clone it and made it into arial which is well known till today

What is the difference between arial and helvet? Well it is really not that simple after all to tell the difference but if you look at some characteristic you'll notice the difference. Of simple difference is this...

Notice how the ends are all straight like cut off vertically on the helvet (black) and how arial's are slants most of the time? Yes that is the difference, as simple as that. Recently I notice more helvet on the street hmmmm. The signage that are on the roads are all helvets... cool

So what's the point of blogging this right? Haha I just express my feel towards a font that I misunderstood for a long time and now I begin to see the beauty side of it and am already using it, along with the http://johnin2008.wordpress.com pictures are all in helvet these few days... and will continue to put them in good use... long live helvetica?

I guess the bottom line why people like it is because it is very solid, standing firm, squarish if you want to call it or simply just stereotypically aesthetically beautiful. So are you're interested in this documentary?