Response: Helvetica and Just My Type

Helvetica was much more interesting than some documentaries that I've seen, which is kind of surprising in the sense that it's about typography! I guess that's just the designer in me speaking, and I'm sure that a great deal of you felt the same way. One thing that truly interested me in the film was the presence of Helvetica in many many many...many different areas. For example, the font was seen at American Apparel stores, on the logo for American Airlines, on subway signs, just about every kind of sign you could imagine. Also, Helvetica is the font that is used on the iPod, iPad and iPhone (I know this because I had to look it up for an app that I'm in the process of making). Helvetica really is so deeply niched into all-things-involving-typography that I can't seem to think that anything will take its place anytime soon.

From http://thepicture.wordpress.com/tag/american-apparel/.

The process of cutting and inking typography before computers were introduced looked like a time consuming, but yet all-too-beautiful process. There's something to be said about creating things by hand rather than by computer, but I found it very interesting that one of the men who was interviewed in the film stated that the use of computers allows us to design more quickly, but not necessarily better. That was the take-away point that I found to be most true. Sometimes the pieces of art that I like the most in a magazine are hand drawn.

As for Just My Type, I think the book is witty and humorous and presents the idea of typography in an interesting and fresh way. But then again, any book that mentions The Beatles normally catches my attention pretty easily. That being said, my favorite chapter was Chapter 19, The Serif of Liverpool. If you've yet to read that specific chapter, it focuses on The Beatles logo.

From http://vectorlogo.blogspot.com/2009/08/beatles-logo-eps.html

Although it seems like a normal plain font upon first glace, take a second look. The B stretches the whole height of the two words; the t reaches far below the rest of the line, and the t in "the" cups the "h". The chapter goes on to explain how much we associate band's logo fonts with the band itself, and even if another word is written in that font (many of which can now be downloaded typography thanks to all of the typography websites), we still reference the band itself.