Sebastiaan at the Cocoia blog goes off on one about Helvetica
Erik Spiekermann, a great type designer, was asked in the eponymous Helvetica movie;
“Why, 50 years later, is [Helvetica] still so popular?â€
Erik stares into space a few seconds, pondering, sighs, then answers:
— “I don’t know… Why is bad taste ubiquitous?â€
Times like this, designers really annoy me. In fact, all sorts of opinion bigots annoy the shit out of me. I can’t be bothered paying for clothing labels, I don’t give a shit which music is cool and I don’t want some UI bigot telling me what I should be liking. You’re no better than that prick who shows people how to be naked. I don’t think being naked is an issue for over 50% of the UK. It’s being clinically obese that is an issue for them (and I say this as someone who is working to lose weight). But sure it’s okay if you’re in danger of a heart attack if you just wear these clothes which are ‘in’ this season.
Wankers.
I am not wrong for liking Helvetica. It’s my opinion. I like the way it look on the virtual page as I type. Just because it offends some hoodie-wearing designer prick, doesn’t make me wrong. I’m not so impressed with all of this avant garde, manufactured-quirky shit that keeps being thrown out there. It’s all as authentic-quirky as a Marilyn Manson video. Cynically manufactured beyond that inch of life.
If I like something and you don’t, be thankful for diversity. The world would be a boringly shit place if we all liked the same stuff.
I think his point was more that Helvetica can be bad if used out of context, he certainly didnt say that Helvetica is ugly, just in certain contexts.
Read the post.
I believe this post here is an example of “Going off” where as Sebastiaan’s post is an organized presentation of why helvetica may not be best suited to a UI.
Cawlin, did you miss the quote? “Why is bad taste ubiquitous?”
How elitist and self-masturbatory can you get? He defines what he doesn’t like to see as ‘bad taste’?
Or do you have another definition of bad?
Really curious.
Danny, I did read it. Read the quote:
Why is Helvetica so popular?
Why is bad taste ubiquitous?
I think that pretty much sums up that Spiekermann has his own design agenda and considers your taste to be ‘bad’ if you like Helvetica.
to which I say: fuck him.
Hey, the ‘hoodie-wearing designer prick’ here. I just wanted to drop by and tell you that I think you can like Helvetica for all I care. Hell, you can use it any day of the year without me cringing.
I just wouldn’t use tiny-sized Helvetica in an application interface, as it’s not designed for it. Actually, it was designed in 1957, so there’s surprisingly little Helvetica can contribute to screen typography without being heavily adjusted, in which case it’s hardly Max Miedinger’s Helvetica, but a shade of its former self, best left to die in the gutter in favor of a better typeface that was designed for screen use from the start.
Also, if you’d look at what Erik Spiekermann, whom I paraphrased, designs, you can see it is not avant garde, manufactured quirky shit that is produced. Meta is a fantastic alternative as a clean sans serif to say, Helvetica. The only thing stopping it is mass system installations, for which licenses need to be sold. Apple is lackluster in expanding its catalogue of typefaces. If anything of my post would have communicated, I hope it’s been that; that I want one of my favorite companies, Apple, to start caring more about typography. Everybody likes Helvetica. That’s exactly the point. What you expect from a good designer is to find the next aesthetic, not rehash the 60-year old ones.
Also, a detail here is that Erik Spiekermann is referring to Helvetica being a signal of bad taste because he loves letterforms, and works with them every waking second of his life. If you are so intimate with the typefaces that are out there, it’s utterly disgusting to see that people with access to more original and expressive typefaces (e.g. designers at big ad agencies) still opt for a conservative Helvetica treatment, diminishing the typographic diversity.
mj, those quotes are quite compelling, but I dont think they really sum up the post…. at all.
hi Sebastiaan 🙂
Don’t take it personally I wasn’t commenting about the use of typefaces in UI design but at the notion that something that is ‘popular’ or ‘liked’ can represent bad taste.
The issue with typefaces is that the common man doesn’t seem to actually care. I work from a few typefaces and seldom stray from them because I’m a technologist and not a designer.
So what is it – you agree with Spiekermann that use of Helvetica is bad taste or do you think there’s a context issue there? That Spiekermann was saying that stuff he considers to be bad taste is everywhere in a sort of ‘well, what the hell are ya gonna do’ kind of way?
From your response, I’m thinking it was a context issue.
Danny – I wasn’t commenting on Sebastiaan’s post in itself (which I agree with) but on the Spiekermann quote – which I loathe the sentiment of.
That’s kinda why I didn’t actually quote any of Sebastiaan’s content. 🙂