Helvetica, gods of fonts. I don’t like the a.

I finally saw the much-trumpeted film. It was amusing; mainly for the characters in it – and I mean the designers, not the fontface. That helvetica is everywhere is no surprise. It is clean, bland, large, simple and good for signage. Generally.
But the designers was the funniest bits. Some of them are clearly off their rockers, and I love it. Especially Erik Spiekermann is a raving loony, a man with wit, opinions and a careless regards of others. “I am always on time, but always a year late”, he says. He despises Helvetica for having no contrast; no rhythm. He shrugs, and says bad design is everywhere.

The film is seen as a homage to Helvetica, but if you watch the extras, the table turns. Seen from there, not much positive is said about it. And Rick Poynor goes a little overboard with his talk about the psychology of enslavement. Sometimes he is away with the faries, sometimes he is dead on. Paula Sher sees Helvetica as the fontface of war, power and corruption.

Matthew Carter, the man behind verdana, tahoma and caslon, seems to be the one of a few genuinely in awe of the fontface, and Vignellis rants over the “flowerchildren” is both hilarious and serious. Such a sweet, sweet man.

Most of the interviews take place in offices, meetingrooms and those bare, pale designers hideouts. One bizarre  exception is Michael C. Place – interviewed in a spare room in his house, it seems, with two or more hairless Sphynx cats crawling over a spare bed, chewing on microphone cords and climbing over cardboardboxes; green trees and the hint of a garden outside. In contrast to the bareness of designers meetingrooms. Not a coincidence, surely.

Hoefler and Frere-Jones are delightful – Hoefler cannot shut up to save his life, and his endless stream confirms Frere-Jones’s quiet assurances that type designers are bonkers, no exceptions.

Müller, a norwegian gone swiss-german-dutch-english, with a bizarre gray lions mane, points at all sorts of signs. He looks increasingly self-conscious, but it gets funnier and funnier, as he stands beside all sorts of signs, popping up behind them, pointing out Helvetica.

Hermann Zapf – I have always admired Zapf for his calligraphy, but this is the first time I have seen him in moving pictures – he seems the incarnation of graphic craftsman and artist, an unassuming elderly gentleman with enough understatement to go around. If you didn’t know, you’d think him a doddering, doodling anybody. And, in the extras, it turns out, when he cannot say anything nice about helvetica, he refuses to say anything at all. When pushed, he mutters “I have never used Helvetica”. To him, it’s too 19th century. I like 20th century design, he says. Frutiger. There are lots and lots of other good faces around, he says, there is no need to always use helvetica.

Bless him.

David Carson – fruitcake par excellence – a brilliant, silly, funny guy, not in the least bit interested in squares and rules, and a doer of – and fan of – those mistakes others might find deadly.

So what do I think of Helvetica?
I hate the a. I really do. It ruins it all for me. This is a simple, clean face, and then you add that bendy little thing on the a. It’s not a serif, maybe it is to soften the font a little, I don’t know. But the a is fiddly enough as it is. It doesn’t show in the bold, thank god. I know a guy who doesn’t like the k, and for that reason refuse to use it.

Designers are lunatics. They are weird and wonderful. I’m happy to be one.