I honestly never paid attention, but Helvetica really is everywhere. I think the next time I’m walking in the city I’m going to be paying attention and looking for the font. It actually opens my eyes similar to how the fountainhead made me pay attention to different modernistic architecture. I also think it is just surprising how passionate people are about not just Helvetica and about typeface in general. Some of the speakers seem to really love looking at fonts and seeing how they help display a message, like how Matthew Carter thought the horizontal terminals in the “a,” “e,” “g,” and “c.” I admire that because I never would look at something so simple and see art as he does.
Matthew Carter was a big fan of Helvetica, as many others are, but others seemed almost offended by it. On that note, I will disagree with Erik Spiekerman and say that I do like Helvetica. He makes a point how writing is supposed to be like handwriting, and how Helvetica just goes against that concept completely, but I think there is a nice simple look to it. I mean it is legible and you can really get an idea across with it. Wim Crouwel said, “the meaning is in the content of the text and not in the typeface and that’s why we loved Helvetica very much.” This is the one quote that really stuck out for me. I couldn’t agree more. The point in words is to get a message across and it is easier to do that when were not distracted by how the word itself looks.
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