51–58 of 58 posts
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.
> variations on Helvetica have been pre-installed on most modern personal computers by default Windows doesn't have one.
"Hacker News" typeface in the upper left (which I believe is Verdana) does not have any serifs on it. Serifs are the extra little points and tails on letters. Hacker News body font and logo does not have serifs, therefore it is sans-serif. 'sans' meaning 'without'.
Sans-serifs are also called grotesque (or grotesk) because it appears as though the letters have had limbs amputated. :D Or at least that's how I remember the term. People definitely though they were ugly when they first appeared.
Text written in a serif typeface is considered more distinguished and authoritative . Imagine the bible written in the same font used on HN here, it would look odd.
Isn't HN authoritative and distinguished? I'll let the reader decide. However you should consider that you are reading the word 'fart' right now in it.
Fart.
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.
> variations on Helvetica have been pre-installed on most modern personal computers by default Windows doesn't have one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> variations on Helvetica have been pre-installed on most modern personal computers by default Windows doesn't have one.
Arial is essentially a Helvetica variation. At it's most charitable, Arial is to Helvetica as RC Cola is to Coke, with Monotype owning Arial and Linotype owning Helvetica.
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…
You mean how Nazi abolished Fraktur along with Kurrentschrift?
> On January 3, 1941, Martin Bormann issued a circular to all public offices which declared Fraktur (and its corollary, the Sütterlin-based handwriting) to be Judenlettern (Jewish letters) and prohibited their further use.
> “In a hundred years, our language will be the European language. The nations of the east, the north and the west will, to communicate with us, learn our language. The prerequisite for this: The script called Gothic is replaced by the script we have called Latin so far.” (Hitler's declaration in the Reichstag, 1934)
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…
> use of Fraktur by a certain european political party You mean how Nazi abolished Fraktur along with Kurrentschrift? > On January 3, 1941, Martin Bormann issued a circular to all public offices which declared Fraktur (and its corollary, the Sütterlin-based handwriting) to be Judenlettern (Jewish letters) and prohibited their further use. > “In a hundred years, our language will be the European language. The nations…