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Opinion on Helvetica

In watching the film Helvetica, my eyes were opened to the world around me and made me aware of how reliant we are on typeface. I had never really noticed how important typeface is to our society and how it affects our daily lives until now. Anywhere you look, Helvetica is used 99% of the time. On street signs, business signs, maps, directories, buildings, logos, food products, and anything that requires the use of text information for the American society. Ever since watching this film, everywhere I go I am scanning the streets looking for Helvetica and taking note of how often it is used. Just sitting in my room writing this I am looking around and noticing how often Hevletica shows up.

Like Lars Muller said, Helvetica is “the perfume of the city, we don’t notice it but would miss it if it wasn’t there.” I find this statement to be very true because if we take away everything that is written in Helvetica and replaced it with something like Times New Roman, the atmosphere would be completely changed. I agree with Leslie Savan’s statement (below) about Helvetica treating all problems from our daily lives as if they don’t exist. “Helvetica has almost like a perfect balance of push and pull in its letters. And that perfect balance sort of is saying to us – well it’s not sort of, it is saying to us don’t worry, any of the problems that you’re having, or the problems in the world, or problems getting through the subway, or finding a bathroom… all those problems aren’t going to spill over, they’ll be contained. And in fact, maybe they don’t exist.” Helvetica is like the cure-all for typeface, it is the go-to. It very versatile and has the ability to make everything simple. It doesn’t project any certain mood or feel to the audience, it is up to the content to do that. Wim Crouwel makes a good point when he says “the meaning is in the content of the text and not in the typeface, and that is why we loved Helvetica very much.” 

Lars Muller

Leslie Savan

Wim Couwel