Helvetica
While browsing through my netflix recommendations I noticed a documentary simply called Helvetica. Why I was recommended this I do not know. It isn’t that I have something against documentaries. When I watch them I tend to find them to be interesting but I really don’t watch them often. This particular documentary stood out thought. After all it was a documentary about the font Helvetica. Must be a damn impressive font to make a movie about it. I read the description and apparently Helvetica is the most impressive and most widespread font ever. It is everywhere. It has played an important role in our existence. If Google doesn’t own the world then it must be because Helvetica isn’t ready to sell yet.
Except when I type I use Times New Roman. I’m pretty sure that’s the default on most computers and I’m pretty sure Times New Roman is not Helvetica. I think I did what most people would do. I opened up my word processor and began a search to see Helvetica myself. But my computer does not have Helvetica. Neither did that of my friend. How can Helvetica, most incredible font ever, not be on PCs? I was outraged. Clearly the documentary was just a propaganda film financed by the Helvetica masters to promote their dying font.
The obvious course of action was to actually watch this piece of propaganda bullshit. Unfortunately, as I attempted to watch with my friend, we were in an environment where there was a lot of talking, mostly about how Helvetica sucks, and the documentary was shot in a whisper, probably so the movie could serve as one huge subliminal message. Needless to say, in a documentary about a font there was not a lot of action unless you count moving shots of unmoving text.
I quickly got bored and turned to other sources of research like imdb and wikipedia. What I discovered, at least I think this is how it works, is that Microsoft decided to create its own generic version of Helvetica because it was concerned that it would have to pay whoever owns Helvetica to use it. So Microsoft invented Arial, which is a Helvetica knock off and Macs allegedly kept usting Helvetica but now that many Macs use Microsoft word Arial is becoming the new Helvetica. Helvetica is still the international font of street signs but how long can this last as Microsoft Office dominates word processing? I wonder which font open source office products use.
Anyway, this still doesn’t make sense because Helvetica is supposed to be so good because of its neutrality and readability. Well I think Arial is not especially readable and I have been specifically told not to use Arial on important documents because it can be hard to read when printed out. Furthermore, I have heard from an industry pro (an editor) that serifs should be a part of word processing fonts and Arial does not have serifs. Of course, now I’m wondering what font I’m writing in right now. It would be nicely ironic if it was Helvetica or Arial or some other wannabe. In any case Helvetica is bullshit and I can’t believe netflix recommended me a documentary that was not just a font documentary but a documentary served as propaganda for that font.
