Tikkabik

I don't pretend to be a graphic designer either by vocation or talent; I'm definitely more comfortable on the operational end of a keyboard putting words on paper or on the screen.

Still, I worked for a damned good graphic design firm for a couple of years, and have spent virtually my entire adult life and professional career with Macintosh computers. So it was inevitable that I would develop a real interest in and love for various aspects of design, typography, and that some of those tools and vocabulary that designers use would eventually find their way into my arsenal.

Netflix recently delivered Helvetica, a charming documentary by Gary Hustwit about the most ubiquitous typeface in use today. It tracks the story of how Helvetica was made, what designers think about it, and how it's used in modern life. On the surface it seems like a dry topic, and I guess to some it is. But I highly recommend it to anyone who may have any interest in type or design.

What makes Helvetica (the documentary) so interesting is that the designers don't uniformly rhapsodize Helvetica as the ultimate expression of typographic design. If they had, it'd be an hour-long ad for Helvetica, and that would be boring. In point of fact, some are quick to point out that Helvetica does represent the ultimate expression of a particular theory of Swiss modernist design philosophy that, 50 years later, is quite unlikely to evolve or change.

Some love it. Massimo Vignelli, who counts the New York Subway and American Airlines among his successes (both of which use Helvetica), is a practical example (Vignelli says in the course of his interview that if he's being generous, he counts maybe 12 useable typefaces, period). Lars Müller refers to Helvetica -- without any sarcasm -- as "the perfume of the city." An oddly apt albeit strange metaphor (considering the perfume of some major cities seems to be more similar to urine and rotting garbage).

Others absolutely loathe it, such as Erik Spiekermann, the German typographer who created FF Meta and ITC Officina, who rather derisively refers to Helvetica as "air," and says "there's no choice, you have to breathe, so you have to use Helvetica."

Paula Scher, a product of 60's counterculture who made her bones designing record covers for Atlantic and CBS Records in the 70s, decries Helvetica (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) as the ultimate expression of bland corporate fascism, and blames both the Vietnam and the Iraq War on it.

I admit that some of this comes off as rather navel-contemplative, and I know it's not everyone's cup of tea. But I think that if you watch it, you may be surprised at just how ubiquitous Helvetica is, how powerfully it can be used, and how polarizing it can be.