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Helvetica, a documentary

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Re: Helvetica, a documentary

#21

Post by [deleted] »

Fnoord wrote: post #20
082349872349872 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the optimistic angle; the pessimistic is that Helvetica grew in popularity due to its being nearly the polar opposite of a just-prior-to-mid-century use of Fraktur by a certain european political party. (Helvetia itself gained a fourth national language in 1938, due to comments made by someone who made his trains run on time; the dutch reformed their spelling in 1947 to distance their language from a neighbour…

> the dutch reformed their spelling in 1947 to distance their language from a neighbouring country in the same language family who they had had the pleasure of hosting Sorry, what are you trying to say here? The Dutch had the pleasure of hosting what exactly?

[deleted]

Re: Helvetica, a documentary

#22

Post by [deleted] »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #7

I enjoyed learning the cultural context from which Helvetica emerged. In particular, I remember one man talking about how in the early 1900s, a company’s letterhead might have a floral font proclaiming The Inimitable Widgets, Gadgets, and Sprongdonacle Corporation of the Empire State. Then Helvetica comes along, and the company’s letterhead becomes Widgets Co. The same clean look mirrored in Mid-Century Modern and th…

[deleted]

Re: Helvetica, a documentary

#23

Post by Nitramp »

082349872349872 wrote: post #18
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #7

I enjoyed learning the cultural context from which Helvetica emerged. In particular, I remember one man talking about how in the early 1900s, a company’s letterhead might have a floral font proclaiming The Inimitable Widgets, Gadgets, and Sprongdonacle Corporation of the Empire State. Then Helvetica comes along, and the company’s letterhead becomes Widgets Co. The same clean look mirrored in Mid-Century Modern and th…

That's the optimistic angle; the pessimistic is that Helvetica grew in popularity due to its being nearly the polar opposite of a just-prior-to-mid-century use of Fraktur by a certain european political party. (Helvetia itself gained a fourth national language in 1938, due to comments made by someone who made his trains run on time; the dutch reformed their spelling in 1947 to distance their language from a neighbour…

That is a common misconception. The Nazis initially did not particularly emphasize the use of Fraktur (it was a mixed message), and in 1941 Hitler decided to standardize on Antiqua fonts for all printing. (And modern Grotesks such as Helvetica are based on Antiqua)

Re: Helvetica, a documentary

#24

Post by bcks »

I really enjoyed this film, but in telling the story of the cultural power and ubiquity of Helvetica, I think it dramatically underplays the fact that variations on Helvetica have been pre-installed on most modern personal computers by default.

Re: Helvetica, a documentary

#25

Post by maayank »

Fnoord wrote: post #20
082349872349872 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the optimistic angle; the pessimistic is that Helvetica grew in popularity due to its being nearly the polar opposite of a just-prior-to-mid-century use of Fraktur by a certain european political party. (Helvetia itself gained a fourth national language in 1938, due to comments made by someone who made his trains run on time; the dutch reformed their spelling in 1947 to distance their language from a neighbour…

> the dutch reformed their spelling in 1947 to distance their language from a neighbouring country in the same language family who they had had the pleasure of hosting Sorry, what are you trying to say here? The Dutch had the pleasure of hosting what exactly?

> Sorry, what are you trying to say here? The Dutch had the pleasure of hosting what exactly?

Hosted a party! In seriousness though, s/he refers to the German occupation of the Netherlands in WW2.

Re: Helvetica, a documentary

#26

Post by aebtebeten »

maayank wrote: post #25
Fnoord wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the dutch reformed their spelling in 1947 to distance their language from a neighbouring country in the same language family who they had had the pleasure of hosting Sorry, what are you trying to say here? The Dutch had the pleasure of hosting what exactly?

> Sorry, what are you trying to say here? The Dutch had the pleasure of hosting what exactly? Hosted a party! In seriousness though, s/he refers to the German occupation of the Netherlands in WW2.

Luckily that was a long time ago, and those sorts of politics have been discredited for a good portion of a century.

These days we are all excellent to each other and party on.

(if you're ready to party, here's some dutch cultural appropriation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVz_IJoyO6Y )

Re: Helvetica, a documentary

#27

Post by ghaff »

jamesvandyne wrote: post #16
glenngillen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add Urbanized to that list too, it’s a really great look at how cities and their spaces are designed. He also recently produced Rams which I’ve not yet had a chance to see but I hope is on par with his previous work. And if you enjoy these films you’ll also likely appreciate the Abstract series which originally aired on Netflix.

Rams is great. Bought it on Vimeo shortly after it came out. You won’t regret it. When Rams speaks about design, it always makes me reflect on modern software and how we’ve regressed so much. Though I think’s mostly as a single widget does 20 different things, which isn’t a great idea in the first place.

>Though I think’s mostly as a single widget does 20 different things, which isn’t a great idea in the first place.

You mean like a smartphone? :-)

It's a tradeoff. For example, even a well-equipped kitchen generally doesn't have every sort of one-off small appliance or implement. On the one hand, if you do make a lot of rice, say, a rice cooker makes a lot of sense. If you make rice a few times a year? Probably makes more sense just to make it on the stovetop.

Re: Helvetica, a documentary

#29

Post by vijucat »

Aside: I noticed that Google has some great fonts as part of Google Slides and other products while helping my daughter with her distance learning homework during the recent COVID 19 scare. In particular, I liked Comfortaa [1], Pacifico [2] (as a Comic Sans alternative), and Merriweather [3] (as a formal alternative for Times New Roman). You can download them here: https://fonts.google.com/?sort=popularity

[1] https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Comfortaa [2] https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Pacifico [3] https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Merriweather

Re: Helvetica, a documentary

#30

Post by tasuki »

vijucat wrote: post #29

Aside: I noticed that Google has some great fonts as part of Google Slides and other products while helping my daughter with her distance learning homework during the recent COVID 19 scare. In particular, I liked Comfortaa [1], Pacifico [2] (as a Comic Sans alternative), and Merriweather [3] (as a formal alternative for Times New Roman). You can download them here: https://fonts.google.com/?sort=popularity [1] https:…

Indeed - Google Fonts lists some good typefaces! I've listed my favourites at https://fonts.tasuki.org/
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