Viewing: Helvetica

It is funny, or maybe it’s not, that I found myself thinking about all the warring schools of aesthetics, ordering, and conformity in the Poetic Industrial Complex while watching Helvetica (2007) yesterday evening. Helvetica is an entire documentary on the ubiquitous sans serif typeface of the same name, and which emerged in the 1960’s to become the typeface of major corporations and urban/municipal bodies. Think of city planning without Helvetica. Actually, think of the feel of city, of urban spaces pre-Helvetica; I can’t help but feel a certain nostalgia for the old town and charming typefaces of street signs, tiled subway signs created like mosaics, the hand-lettered storefront signs of little shops (or shoppes).

Then there is Helvetica, the font of New York’s MTA, of our IRS forms, of American Airlines, of Toyota, of the mega-store Target, of Greyhound, Crate and Barrel, of the porn-y American Apparel, of major petroleum companies. And so on. Efficiency, order, no bullshit. Buy this. Obey.  Comply. So that’s the old world versus the modern world, or the Old World versus the Modern World. In the Old World, the pre-Modern World, there is room for personal touches, and despite the bustle of burgeoning industrializing centers, the people have not yet lost or relinquished their individuality or the kinds of shortcomings and imperfections which, like charming handpainted storefront signs make us uniquely us.

In the Modern World, imagine Times Square without Helvetica, imagine if the tkts and subway signs, maps, enter and do not enter signs were not uniformly produced. It would be a throwback to pre-Modern times, still in the process of ordering its chaos. Helvetica is thus the clean and terse typeface of the Modern World, of the historical movement in art called Modernism, of the corporate and authoritarian cultures and their massive edifices and official forms and documents.

So there is that. Helvetica comes to be associated with the following messages: Conform. Comply. Obey.

The artists and designers in this documentary are much like us poets and our Poetic Industrial Complex. Those artists of the Modern era speak of Helvetica’s simple beauty, its clean lines, its ratio of thickness to thinness (think: the stem of the lowercase h, and then the joint where it curves). These artists of the Modern era speak of order and singularity.

The younger artists, those who follow the Modernists, in other words, the post-Modern(ist) artists are divided. Do they continue to default to Helvetica in their designs, and/or is it a failure of their imaginations to continue to default to Helvetica, as they are now charged with maintaining or creating anew the face of our urban centers, corporate, government, and municipal bodies. Or do they re-imagine, re-envision an era which is not reliant upon conformity and obedience.

Some of these younger artists, these post-Modern artists, who grew up amid its ubiquity, view Helvetica as one of many tools. Some of these post-Modern artists have formed their own movements:

Don’t confuse legibility with communication. Just because something is legible doesn’t mean it communicates and, more importantly, doesn’t mean it communicates the right thing.

That’s David Carson, who believes in the message as primary, in the design as enhancing the conveying of the message, and the message being plural, spoken by many speakers. Has come to be known as the father of grunge design, which I think of as saturation and feeling, these things which can be said to be absent from Helvetica designs.

Other post-Modern artists vehemently argue that Helvetica’s message of conformity is the same message which makes us as a Modern Society complacent and complicit when it comes to the wars our corporations and government bodies wage. Helvetica as the Establishment. Helvetica holding hands with Fascism. Post-Modern artists so vehemently against it, though it is not clear what many of these post-Modern artists are in favor of.

Poets, is this at all sounding familiar?

Oscar has a good write-up about Helvetica here.

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A few years ago, Justin Chin asked me whether I considered font, whether I obsessed about it, for as writers, aren’t we concerned with the physical density of our words, of the white space which accompanies our words in public presentation. Serif or sans serif, are we traditional, old school; are we modern, forward looking. And do we consider ourselves professionals once we let go of our sentimental attachment to the Comic Sans and other bubbly, curly typefaces which once plagued our printed out poems, which we kept in three-hole punched plastic sheet protectors in sacred binders.

Anyway.

This is my manuscript typeface history:

• Gravities of Center: Verdana 10-point. Single spaced.
• Poeta en San Francisco: Georgia 9.5-point. 1.25 spaced.
• Diwata: Franklin Gothic Book 10-point. 1.5 spaced.

I’d always just wanted not to default to Times Roman, which I think is ugly and generic. Not sure the above really tells you anything more about me and my poetics. Maybe it does. You tell me.