Helvetica

Text, is something that we see every day in many different forms and in different ways.  Whether we see text in books, online, or on signs that we pass while we are driving.  These different types are there if we realize it or not.  When you go to write a paper you can go to font and there are hundreds of different styles in which you can write.  Recently I watched a program called Helvetica.  This program was very interesting to me.  Helvetica is a type of font that was developed in Switzerland and has taken over a large proportion of the worlds typography.  Looking at different companies you can see that helvetica is a commonly used typography because of its uniformity.  Helvetica was developed over several years for a clean concise look that was spaciously good to be able to see and read texts.  This typography is the front runner in the whole world right now and it appears that it will continue to have this success because it has become almost second nature to people in the world and it is a default for many different programs.  Most people do not realize that this typography is the most commonly used in the whole world (when it comes to English) and appears all over the place.  Many typographers do not like this text simply because they feel like it has too much power and typography should change with the feel or ideology of a company or a person.  That is why there are many different fonts and why the formation of projects need to have different fonts for the right kind of feel.  I feel like it is a good thing though for there to be a main typography for texts.  It is easier to understand basics if it is formatted in a similar fashion as other tools and settings.  I am not saying that in every instance it should be used, but having a default typography allows other fonts to really come alive in certain instances and that typography will be really expressive.  Helvetica is almost like a control group in science and depending on the settings a person will feel a different affect when looking at different types of fonts.  After watching the clip Helvetica I realized just how many things around me are this typography and now I can see how typographers represent their ideas into fonts.  This was a fascinating piece and it has changed the way I think about typographer which is interesting.