1
00:01:48,108 --> 00:01:52,111
Type is saying things to us all the time.

2
00:01:52,112 --> 00:01:55,698
Typefaces express a mood,
an atmosphere,

3
00:01:55,699 --> 00:01:59,578
they give words a certain coloring.

4
00:01:59,953 --> 00:02:02,789
Everywhere you look, you see typefaces.

5
00:02:02,956 --> 00:02:06,076
But there's probably one you see more
than any other one, and that's helvetica.

6
00:02:06,335 --> 00:02:08,544
You know, there it is, and it just seems to
come from nowhere.

7
00:02:08,545 --> 00:02:11,632
It seems like air, it seems like gravity.

8
00:02:12,257 --> 00:02:14,175
It's hard to evaluate it,

9
00:02:14,176 --> 00:02:16,552
it's like being asked what you think about
off-white paint,

10
00:02:16,553 --> 00:02:18,804
it's just, there.

11
00:02:18,805 --> 00:02:23,018
It's hard to get your head around
something that big.

12
00:02:23,852 --> 00:02:27,563
Most people who use helvetica use it
because it's ubiquitous.

13
00:02:27,564 --> 00:02:30,566
It's like going to McDonalds instead of
thinking about food.

14
00:02:30,567 --> 00:02:32,234
Because it's there, it's on every street
corner.

15
00:02:32,235 --> 00:02:34,905
So let's eat crap, because it's on the
corner.

16
00:02:37,240 --> 00:02:41,203
For me, helvetica's just this beautiful,
timeless thing.

17
00:02:42,037 --> 00:02:45,749
And certain things shouldn't be messed
with, you know?

18
00:02:47,292 --> 00:02:51,671
Graphic design is the communication
framework,

19
00:02:51,672 --> 00:02:54,507
through which these messages, about
what the world is now

20
00:02:54,508 --> 00:02:56,759
and what we should aspire to,

21
00:02:56,760 --> 00:02:58,720
it's the way they reach us.

22
00:02:59,262 --> 00:03:03,307
The designer has an enormous
responsibility,

23
00:03:03,308 --> 00:03:08,313
those are the people putting their wires
into our heads.

24
00:03:36,466 --> 00:03:39,386
Now should I talk? Should I not talk?

25
00:03:39,678 --> 00:03:41,513
You want me to say something?

26
00:03:41,972 --> 00:03:43,890
Say something, say nothing?

27
00:03:49,271 --> 00:03:52,273
The life of a designer is a life of fight:

28
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Fight against the ugliness.

29
00:03:55,318 --> 00:03:58,696
Just like a doctor fights against disease.

30
00:03:58,697 --> 00:04:02,366
For us, the visual disease is what we have
around,

31
00:04:02,367 --> 00:04:05,328
and what we try to do is to cure it
somehow, with design.

32
00:04:11,168 --> 00:04:16,339
A good typographer always has sensitivity
about the distance between the letters.

33
00:04:16,798 --> 00:04:19,300
We think typography is black and white.

34
00:04:19,301 --> 00:04:22,429
Typography is really white, it's not even
black.

35
00:04:22,971 --> 00:04:26,433
It is the space between the blacks that
really makes it.

36
00:04:26,600 --> 00:04:29,059
In a sense it's like music,

37
00:04:29,060 --> 00:04:32,481
it's not the notes, it's the space you put
between the notes that makes the music.

38
00:04:33,815 --> 00:04:37,902
For instance, we designed the corporate
identity for American airlines.

39
00:04:37,903 --> 00:04:39,945
This was done in 1966,

40
00:04:39,946 --> 00:04:44,116
and the novelty at the time was the fact of
making one word instead of two

41
00:04:44,117 --> 00:04:47,370
American airlines by making
americanairlines all one word,

42
00:04:47,704 --> 00:04:50,415
half red and half blue, just separated
by the color.

43
00:04:50,832 --> 00:04:54,586
What could me more American than red
and blue? You know, so it's perfect.

44
00:04:55,545 --> 00:04:58,923
It's the only airline in the
last forty years that has

45
00:04:58,924 --> 00:05:00,800
not changed their identity.

46
00:05:00,801 --> 00:05:05,387
All the airlines coming and going and changing... American
airlines is still the same. There's no need to change,

47
00:05:05,388 --> 00:05:08,224
and how can they improve it?

48
00:05:08,225 --> 00:05:12,646
They got the best already: American
airlines in helvetica.

49
00:05:15,941 --> 00:05:19,861
We always had a tendency to use
very few typefaces.

50
00:05:20,570 --> 00:05:22,947
It's not that we don't believe in type.

51
00:05:22,948 --> 00:05:26,742
We believe there are not that many
good typefaces.

52
00:05:26,743 --> 00:05:30,539
If I want to be really generous
there's a dozen,

53
00:05:30,747 --> 00:05:32,832
basically I use no more than three.

54
00:05:32,833 --> 00:05:37,504
There are people that think that type
should be expressive.

55
00:05:37,671 --> 00:05:40,799
They have a different point of view
than mine.

56
00:05:41,216 --> 00:05:44,051
I don't think type should be
expressive at all.

57
00:05:44,052 --> 00:05:47,221
I can write the word
'dog' with any typeface

58
00:05:47,222 --> 00:05:49,390
and it doesn't have to look like a dog.

59
00:05:49,391 --> 00:05:53,395
But there are people that think when they
write 'dog' it should bark!

60
00:05:55,939 --> 00:05:59,275
What helvetica is: It's a typeface that was
generated

61
00:05:59,276 --> 00:06:04,239
by a desire of having better legibility.

62
00:06:05,240 --> 00:06:09,661
It is a modern type.
It is a very clear type.

63
00:06:10,537 --> 00:06:13,081
It's good for everything, pretty much.

64
00:06:13,248 --> 00:06:16,375
You can say I love you in helvetica.

65
00:06:16,376 --> 00:06:20,713
And you can say it with helvetica extra
light if you want to be really fancy.

66
00:06:20,714 --> 00:06:24,800
Or you can say it in extra bold if
it's really intensive and passionate,

67
00:06:24,801 --> 00:06:25,801
and it might work.

68
00:06:26,386 --> 00:06:28,929
You can also say I hate you.

69
00:06:28,930 --> 00:06:35,937
I can write... I certainly can write a few
letters in helvetica saying that...

70
00:06:38,690 --> 00:06:43,612
To Washington D.C. in particular,
if I can put it that way.

71
00:06:44,821 --> 00:06:48,532
When helvetica came about, we were all
ready for it.

72
00:06:48,533 --> 00:06:52,161
It just had all the right connotations we
were looking for,

73
00:06:52,162 --> 00:06:55,832
for anything that had to spell out
loud and clear: Modern.

74
00:07:01,421 --> 00:07:05,550
The 1950s is an interesting period in the
development of graphic design.

75
00:07:06,134 --> 00:07:07,968
In that postwar period,

76
00:07:07,969 --> 00:07:12,473
after the horror and the cataclysm of the
second world war,

77
00:07:12,474 --> 00:07:17,311
there's a real feeling of idealism among
some designers, many perhaps,

78
00:07:17,312 --> 00:07:19,563
across the world, certainly in Europe,

79
00:07:19,564 --> 00:07:25,069
that design is part of that
need to rebuild, to reconstruct,

80
00:07:25,070 --> 00:07:29,907
to make things more open,

81
00:07:29,908 --> 00:07:33,035
make them run more smoothly, be more
Democratic.

82
00:07:33,036 --> 00:07:37,165
There was this real sense of social
responsibility among designers.

83
00:07:37,666 --> 00:07:43,712
And this is the period when the early
experiments of the high modernist period

84
00:07:43,713 --> 00:07:48,759
start to be broken down, rationalized,
codified,

85
00:07:48,760 --> 00:07:54,056
you get the emergence of this so-called
international typographic style

86
00:07:54,057 --> 00:07:55,933
or Swiss style.

87
00:07:55,934 --> 00:08:01,606
And it's Swiss designers in the 1950s who
are really driving that along.

88
00:08:01,773 --> 00:08:03,899
This is where helvetica comes in.

89
00:08:03,900 --> 00:08:07,153
Helvetica emerges in that period, in 1957,

90
00:08:07,362 --> 00:08:11,616
where there's felt to be a
need for rational typefaces

91
00:08:11,783 --> 00:08:14,743
which can be applied to all kinds of
contemporary information,

92
00:08:14,744 --> 00:08:18,622
whether it's sign systems or corporate
identity

93
00:08:18,623 --> 00:08:21,834
and present those visual expressions of
the modern world to the public

94
00:08:21,835 --> 00:08:25,671
in an intelligible, legible way.

95
00:08:25,672 --> 00:08:27,382
So, it's underpinned, is what I'm saying

96
00:08:27,590 --> 00:08:32,137
by this great feeling shared by many
designers of idealism.

97
00:09:22,270 --> 00:09:23,979
I'm a modernist, you know.

98
00:09:23,980 --> 00:09:25,773
I was trained in that period,

99
00:09:25,774 --> 00:09:28,609
I lived in that period. I love modernism.

100
00:09:28,610 --> 00:09:32,029
I go next week to London to see the
exhibition of modernism.

101
00:09:32,030 --> 00:09:34,491
I want it, you know.

102
00:09:35,408 --> 00:09:37,993
And well, that's my life.

103
00:09:37,994 --> 00:09:43,248
I'm surrounded with furniture from that
period. I can't change myself any more.

104
00:09:43,249 --> 00:09:47,211
But if I see today designers, they use all
typefaces-one day one typeface,

105
00:09:47,212 --> 00:09:53,009
the other day the other typeface, all in
favor of a certain atmosphere,

106
00:09:53,301 --> 00:09:57,222
I'm not... I don't like that.

107
00:09:59,307 --> 00:10:02,310
I'm always interested in clarity.

108
00:10:03,144 --> 00:10:05,187
It should be clear,

109
00:10:05,188 --> 00:10:09,109
it should be readable, it should be
straightforward.

110
00:10:09,776 --> 00:10:13,737
So I started using, gradually, grids for my
design,

111
00:10:13,738 --> 00:10:16,240
for my catalogues for museums.

112
00:10:16,241 --> 00:10:18,659
I invented a grid, and within the grid

113
00:10:18,660 --> 00:10:20,912
I played my game.

114
00:10:21,246 --> 00:10:23,372
But always along the lines of the grid,

115
00:10:23,373 --> 00:10:24,933
so that there is a certain order in it.

116
00:10:25,083 --> 00:10:26,667
That's why I use grids,

117
00:10:26,668 --> 00:10:29,211
that's why they call me "gridnik."

118
00:10:29,212 --> 00:10:32,632
For me, it's a tool of creating order,

119
00:10:33,049 --> 00:10:36,511
and creating order is typography.

120
00:10:38,888 --> 00:10:41,682
I started late with the computer.

121
00:10:41,683 --> 00:10:45,727
I think it was in 1993 that
I bought my first computer

122
00:10:45,728 --> 00:10:49,898
and I learned myself and I can handle it
now quite well

123
00:10:49,899 --> 00:10:52,359
but not like the young people.

124
00:10:52,360 --> 00:10:55,905
I am slow with it and I can do it.

125
00:10:56,614 --> 00:10:58,282
But I'm very much interested and

126
00:10:58,283 --> 00:11:01,244
I would have liked to have
in the sixties the computer

127
00:11:01,953 --> 00:11:05,707
because we can speed up our work, we
can do it so much better,

128
00:11:05,915 --> 00:11:09,836
and especially all the layers you can bring
into your work.

129
00:11:10,503 --> 00:11:15,632
We had the greatest problem in the sixties
to bring two or three layers into the work.

130
00:11:15,633 --> 00:11:20,638
You need to do it by photograph,
you did all kinds of crazy techniques

131
00:11:20,805 --> 00:11:24,267
and working on a poster took us days.

132
00:11:24,726 --> 00:11:29,772
And now within half an hour you have your
ideas and you can make variations

133
00:11:30,106 --> 00:11:32,442
and make a good choice.

134
00:11:33,109 --> 00:11:36,195
You can't do better design with a computer,

135
00:11:36,196 --> 00:11:38,655
but you can speed up your work
enormously.

136
00:11:38,656 --> 00:11:40,491
Shall I begin?

137
00:11:41,201 --> 00:11:44,953
I made these post stamps on the stijl
movement.

138
00:11:44,954 --> 00:11:47,664
In the beginning, if you see the sketches,

139
00:11:47,665 --> 00:11:53,880
I tried to use typefaces from Van doesburg,
one of the artists of the stijl movement.

140
00:11:54,047 --> 00:11:57,174
Then I decided for the final designs

141
00:11:57,175 --> 00:12:01,387
not to use these typefaces because the
illustration is already from that period,

142
00:12:01,554 --> 00:12:06,267
and I used the most neutral typeface-
helvetica.

143
00:12:06,684 --> 00:12:12,606
Helvetica was a real step from the
nineteenth-century typefaces.

144
00:12:12,607 --> 00:12:16,069
It was a little more machined,

145
00:12:16,236 --> 00:12:22,492
it was doing away with these manual
details in it,

146
00:12:22,742 --> 00:12:28,831
and we were impressed by that, because it
was more neutral.

147
00:12:29,040 --> 00:12:32,167
And neutralism was a word that we loved.

148
00:12:32,168 --> 00:12:34,379
It should be neutral;

149
00:12:34,587 --> 00:12:38,048
it shouldn't have a meaning in itself. It
should...

150
00:12:38,049 --> 00:12:44,180
The meaning is in the content of the text,
not in the typeface.

151
00:12:44,347 --> 00:12:47,058
That's why we loved helvetica very much.

152
00:13:32,020 --> 00:13:34,521
I have to say that for a lot of my life

153
00:13:34,522 --> 00:13:38,984
I rather dreaded the moment of having to
explain to someone...

154
00:13:38,985 --> 00:13:42,279
You know, you find yourself sitting next to
some nice person on a plane

155
00:13:42,280 --> 00:13:45,366
or a train and they ask you sooner or later
what you do

156
00:13:46,034 --> 00:13:50,954
and if you say type designer, they
generally look completely blank.

157
00:13:50,955 --> 00:13:54,750
Occasionally, someone will actually know
the term

158
00:13:54,751 --> 00:13:56,836
but then will say, "I thought they were all
deadfl

159
00:13:58,296 --> 00:14:03,050
since I did some work for Microsoft in the
mid-nineties on screen fonts,

160
00:14:03,051 --> 00:14:05,261
particularly verdana and Georgia,

161
00:14:05,553 --> 00:14:08,181
I've had quite comical encounters with
people who will say,

162
00:14:08,348 --> 00:14:10,725
"oh, you work with fonts.

163
00:14:10,933 --> 00:14:15,313
We just got this memo round the office saying we've
all got to start using something called verdana.

164
00:14:15,480 --> 00:14:17,397
Have you ever heard of it?"

165
00:14:17,398 --> 00:14:22,986
Funny conversations that never would
have happened to me

166
00:14:22,987 --> 00:14:24,530
thirty, forty years ago.

167
00:14:25,865 --> 00:14:31,162
My dad was a typographer, and although he
didn't push me to follow in his footsteps

168
00:14:31,704 --> 00:14:38,669
when I left school, high school in the UK, I
had a year to fill before going to university

169
00:14:38,878 --> 00:14:42,047
and I got sent as a trainee, an unpaid
trainee, intern,

170
00:14:42,048 --> 00:14:44,007
to a type foundry in the Netherlands,

171
00:14:44,008 --> 00:14:48,720
where I spent a year learning what turned
out to be a completely obsolete trade

172
00:14:48,721 --> 00:14:50,847
of making type by hand.

173
00:14:50,848 --> 00:14:55,853
It was a matter of cutting letters in
steel, engraving them at actual size.

174
00:14:56,187 --> 00:15:02,026
You know, I doubt if I ever got up quite to
one letter a day at that time.

175
00:15:02,318 --> 00:15:06,530
So, you know, I could say that really I've
made type by practically all the means

176
00:15:06,531 --> 00:15:10,326
it's ever been made in the fifty, fifty-one
years that I've been working.

177
00:15:10,576 --> 00:15:13,830
It's hard to generalize about the way type
designers work.

178
00:15:13,996 --> 00:15:16,665
There isn't a generality of us.

179
00:15:16,666 --> 00:15:20,877
But I think that most type designers
if they were sitting in this chair

180
00:15:20,878 --> 00:15:24,173
would essentially start in much the same
way.

181
00:15:24,590 --> 00:15:27,175
I'd probably start with a lowercase h.

182
00:15:27,176 --> 00:15:30,971
It tells me, first of all, whether this
is a sans serif or a serif typeface.

183
00:15:30,972 --> 00:15:34,349
If it were a serif face
it would look like this

184
00:15:34,350 --> 00:15:36,768
here are the serifs so called, these little
feet

185
00:15:36,769 --> 00:15:40,148
on the bottom and top of the principal
strokes of the letter.

186
00:15:40,481 --> 00:15:44,652
Are they heavy, are they light, what is the
nature of the serif,

187
00:15:45,736 --> 00:15:49,281
is there a lot of thick-thin
contrast in the letter form;

188
00:15:49,282 --> 00:15:54,578
what are the proportions of the overall
height, the ascender, so-called of the h,

189
00:15:54,579 --> 00:15:56,581
and the x-height part of it,

190
00:15:56,956 --> 00:15:59,791
then because an h is a straight-sided
letter,

191
00:15:59,792 --> 00:16:03,254
I would then do a round letter like an 0
along side it.

192
00:16:03,588 --> 00:16:10,969
I can get a sense of how the weight of the curved
part of the o relates to the straight part of the h.

193
00:16:10,970 --> 00:16:16,391
And already there is a huge amount of DNA
is just a couple of ietterforms like that.

194
00:16:16,392 --> 00:16:18,603
I'd then probably do something like a
lowercase p

195
00:16:18,853 --> 00:16:21,105
because it's half straight and half round;

196
00:16:21,314 --> 00:16:23,273
and also it has a descending stroke,

197
00:16:23,274 --> 00:16:27,402
which is another vertical dimension that I
would be interested in establishing.

198
00:16:27,403 --> 00:16:29,154
Then I would then build on that.

199
00:16:29,155 --> 00:16:31,156
If you've got an h you've
got an awful lot of information

200
00:16:31,157 --> 00:16:32,950
about m, n, and u in the lower case.

201
00:16:33,451 --> 00:16:37,288
If you've got a p you've got q and b and d
and so on.

202
00:16:37,663 --> 00:16:41,249
And then just as soon as possible I would
get them into words

203
00:16:41,250 --> 00:16:43,335
or something that looked like words

204
00:16:43,336 --> 00:16:49,800
because for me the experience of reading something
is so critical in judging it as a typeface

205
00:16:49,967 --> 00:16:54,847
because I find that is the acid
test of how a typeface performs.

206
00:17:00,770 --> 00:17:05,315
One of the most characteristic and to my
mind beautiful things about helvetica

207
00:17:05,316 --> 00:17:10,029
is these horizontal terminals, you see
in the lower case a and c and e and g.

208
00:17:10,196 --> 00:17:15,451
The whole structure is based on this
horizontal slicing off of the terminals.

209
00:17:16,744 --> 00:17:20,205
It's very hard for a designer to
look at these characterd and say,

210
00:17:20,206 --> 00:17:23,458
how would I improve them? How would I
make them any different?

211
00:17:23,459 --> 00:17:25,544
They just seem to be exactly right.

212
00:17:25,545 --> 00:17:29,130
I'm glad no one asked me to

213
00:17:29,131 --> 00:17:30,799
second-guess helvetica

214
00:17:30,800 --> 00:17:33,261
because I wouldn't know what to do.

215
00:17:33,469 --> 00:17:37,597
This is the original type specimen of
helvetica

216
00:17:37,598 --> 00:17:41,102
before it was helvetica. It had its
original name, die neue haas grotesk.

217
00:17:41,769 --> 00:17:45,147
The whole story of how helvetica came
into being

218
00:17:45,856 --> 00:17:48,859
is not entirely clear, at least to me.

219
00:17:49,277 --> 00:17:50,944
It is said, and I think it's true,

220
00:17:50,945 --> 00:17:55,533
that eduard hoffmann, who had been the
boss at haas type foundry,

221
00:17:55,741 --> 00:18:01,329
wished to make a modernized version of
akzidenz grotesk,

222
00:18:01,330 --> 00:18:04,750
which was essentially a traditional
nineteenth-century German sans serif,

223
00:18:05,251 --> 00:18:09,254
and his method of doing that was sort of to
clean it up and so on.

224
00:18:09,255 --> 00:18:12,966
And it was of course Max miedinger who
made the drawings for helvetica.

225
00:18:12,967 --> 00:18:17,721
I received the impression from people I
knew back in the sixties and seventies

226
00:18:17,722 --> 00:18:23,518
that hoffmann's part in this was a very
much more significant one

227
00:18:23,519 --> 00:18:28,189
than you might just assume by reading in a
textbook

228
00:18:28,190 --> 00:18:30,568
that Max miedinger was the designer of
helvetica.

229
00:18:59,555 --> 00:19:03,892
You can easily say this was a joint product

230
00:19:03,893 --> 00:19:08,355
of both miedinger and my father.

231
00:19:08,356 --> 00:19:12,318
Miedinger couldn't produce a typeface
alone;

232
00:19:12,985 --> 00:19:14,778
neither could my father.

233
00:19:14,779 --> 00:19:20,284
But when both were working hard together
then something good resulted.

234
00:19:26,916 --> 00:19:32,379
Here are the first trials of neue haas
grotesk,

235
00:19:32,380 --> 00:19:36,092
which was the first name of helvetica.

236
00:19:38,594 --> 00:19:41,680
I knew the way things worked at haas

237
00:19:41,681 --> 00:19:46,102
and I had gradually picked up on the
importance of eduard Hoffman,

238
00:19:47,103 --> 00:19:50,898
and his almost pathological shyness

239
00:19:52,024 --> 00:19:57,613
and the way that he would use other
people's hands.

240
00:19:58,447 --> 00:20:02,618
But boy could you see his mind at work on
the faces

241
00:20:02,868 --> 00:20:04,995
where he was deeply involved.

242
00:20:05,371 --> 00:20:09,374
You have here a note by eduard hoffmann

243
00:20:09,375 --> 00:20:13,754
indicating all the desired corrections.

244
00:20:14,004 --> 00:20:18,007
"The capital y is too slim.

245
00:20:18,008 --> 00:20:21,554
The capital a is also too slim."

246
00:20:22,430 --> 00:20:27,892
When you talk about the design of haas
neue grotesk or helvetica,

247
00:20:27,893 --> 00:20:35,525
what it's all about is the
interrelationship of the negative shape

248
00:20:35,526 --> 00:20:37,902
the figure-ground relationship,

249
00:20:37,903 --> 00:20:41,573
the shapes between characters and within
characters,

250
00:20:41,574 --> 00:20:45,161
with the black if you like, with the inked
sufiace.

251
00:20:45,411 --> 00:20:48,705
And the Swiss pay more attention to the
background,

252
00:20:48,706 --> 00:20:54,878
so that the counters and the space
between characters just hold the letters.

253
00:20:54,879 --> 00:20:57,672
I mean you can't imagine anything moving;

254
00:20:57,673 --> 00:21:00,091
it is so firm.

255
00:21:00,092 --> 00:21:03,011
It's not a letter that's bent to shape;

256
00:21:03,012 --> 00:21:09,852
it's a letter that lives in a powerful
matrix of surrounding space.

257
00:21:10,561 --> 00:21:14,106
It's... oh it's brilliant
when it's done well.

258
00:21:14,690 --> 00:21:18,359
My father had clear ideas

259
00:21:18,360 --> 00:21:20,904
how the typeface should look.

260
00:21:20,905 --> 00:21:26,910
So my father and miedinger sat together,
and he started drawing.

261
00:21:26,911 --> 00:21:30,246
Here you have a proof of an alphabet

262
00:21:30,247 --> 00:21:33,833
with observations by Max miedinger.

263
00:21:33,834 --> 00:21:38,254
When miedinger worked for haas he did
not work as a designer.

264
00:21:38,255 --> 00:21:39,964
He was actually a salesman.

265
00:21:39,965 --> 00:21:41,841
His job was to travel around Switzerland

266
00:21:41,842 --> 00:21:44,136
taking orders for fonts of type.

267
00:21:44,512 --> 00:21:47,305
By profession he was a graphic artist,

268
00:21:47,306 --> 00:21:52,144
but he realized that he could make more
money by selling foundry type.

269
00:21:53,020 --> 00:22:01,020
But my father said, if ever I have an idea of a
new typeface, I'm sure that you could design it.

270
00:22:02,780 --> 00:22:07,910
I have here a type specimen book

271
00:22:08,160 --> 00:22:12,163
of both type foundries, stempel and haas.

272
00:22:12,164 --> 00:22:19,672
You have to know that haas was controlled
by the German type foundry stempel.

273
00:22:20,339 --> 00:22:27,263
And in turn stempel was also controlled by
linotype.

274
00:22:41,026 --> 00:22:46,282
Now we go down to the cellar and see in
our archives where we can find helvetica.

275
00:23:02,131 --> 00:23:05,509
Here we have number 24.

276
00:23:08,178 --> 00:23:13,183
And there it is, the helvetica drawings.

277
00:23:14,935 --> 00:23:19,565
The marketing director at stempel had the
idea to give it a better name

278
00:23:19,899 --> 00:23:26,363
because neue haas grotesk didn't sound
very good for a

279
00:23:26,530 --> 00:23:31,284
typeface that was intended to be sold in
the United States.

280
00:23:31,285 --> 00:23:38,166
Stempel suggested the name of helvetia.

281
00:23:38,167 --> 00:23:43,839
This is very important: Helvetia
is the Latin name of Switzerland.

282
00:23:44,548 --> 00:23:47,342
My father said, that's impossible.

283
00:23:47,343 --> 00:23:54,433
You cannot call a typeface after the name
of a country.

284
00:23:55,309 --> 00:24:00,230
So he said, why don't
you call it helvetica.

285
00:24:00,648 --> 00:24:05,026
So in other words this would be the Swiss
typeface.

286
00:24:05,027 --> 00:24:07,278
And they agreed.

287
00:24:07,279 --> 00:24:10,615
I think helvetica was a perfect name at the
time.

288
00:24:10,616 --> 00:24:13,952
Swiss typography at that time

289
00:24:13,953 --> 00:24:17,539
was well-known worldwide.

290
00:24:17,790 --> 00:24:20,751
So it was the best solution for helvetica

291
00:24:21,085 --> 00:24:22,252
to get into the market.

292
00:24:22,628 --> 00:24:27,091
Once we'd introduced helvetica, it really
ran away.

293
00:24:27,633 --> 00:24:32,638
It was exactly what the designers were
looking for.

294
00:24:32,930 --> 00:24:36,099
I mean, I don't think there's been such a
hot thing since

295
00:24:36,100 --> 00:24:42,022
as the figure-ground relationship properly
executed

296
00:24:42,690 --> 00:24:47,902
and it was... oh, just a landslide
waiting to go down the mountain.

297
00:24:47,903 --> 00:24:50,239
And away it went.

298
00:25:14,263 --> 00:25:18,933
I imagine there was a
time when it just felt so good

299
00:25:18,934 --> 00:25:24,689
to take something that was old and dusty
and homemade and crappy looking

300
00:25:24,690 --> 00:25:27,066
and replace it with helvetica.

301
00:25:27,067 --> 00:25:33,031
It just must have felt like you were scraping
the crud off of like filthy old things

302
00:25:33,032 --> 00:25:35,950
and restoring them to shining beauty. And
in fact

303
00:25:35,951 --> 00:25:40,747
corporate identity in the sixties,
that's what it sort of consisted of.

304
00:25:40,748 --> 00:25:48,589
Clients would come in and they'd have piles
of goofy old brochures from the fifties

305
00:25:48,881 --> 00:25:52,967
that had like shapes on them and goofy
bad photographs.

306
00:25:52,968 --> 00:25:56,429
They'd have some letterhead that would
say amalgamated widget on the top

307
00:25:56,430 --> 00:25:59,599
in some goofy, maybe a script typeface,
above amalgamated widget

308
00:25:59,600 --> 00:26:02,977
it would have an engraving showing their
headquarters

309
00:26:02,978 --> 00:26:07,190
in paducah, Iowa, with smokestacks
belching smoke

310
00:26:07,191 --> 00:26:12,487
you know, and then you go to a corporate
identity consultant circa 1965, 1966,

311
00:26:12,488 --> 00:26:16,240
and they would take that and lay it here
and say, here's your current stationery,

312
00:26:16,241 --> 00:26:19,035
and all it implies, and this is what we're
proposing.

313
00:26:19,036 --> 00:26:22,330
And next to that, next to the belching
smokestacks and

314
00:26:22,331 --> 00:26:26,250
the nuptial script and the ivory paper,

315
00:26:26,251 --> 00:26:29,504
they'd have a crisp bright white piece of
paper

316
00:26:29,505 --> 00:26:33,257
and instead of amalgamated widget,
founded 1857,

317
00:26:33,258 --> 00:26:37,261
it just would say widgco, in helvetica
medium

318
00:26:37,262 --> 00:26:39,722
can you imagine how bracing and thrilling
that was?

319
00:26:39,723 --> 00:26:42,517
That must have seemed like you'd crawled
through a desert

320
00:26:42,518 --> 00:26:45,311
with your mouth just caked with filthy dust

321
00:26:45,312 --> 00:26:49,732
and then someone is offering you a clear,
refreshing, distilled, icy glass of water

322
00:26:49,733 --> 00:26:56,697
to clear away all this horrible,
kind of like, burden of history.

323
00:26:56,698 --> 00:26:59,784
It must have been just fantastic. And you
know it must have been fantastic

324
00:26:59,785 --> 00:27:02,788
because it was done over and over and
over again.

325
00:27:05,040 --> 00:27:10,254
So this is what I'm talking
about, this is life magazine 1953.

326
00:27:10,963 --> 00:27:17,678
One ad after another in here, that just kind of shows every
single visual bad habit that was endemic in those days.

327
00:27:18,137 --> 00:27:21,681
You've got zany hand lettering everywhere,

328
00:27:21,682 --> 00:27:24,977
swash typography to signify elegance,

329
00:27:25,519 --> 00:27:27,895
exclamation points, exclamation points,
exclamation points.

330
00:27:27,896 --> 00:27:31,566
Cursive wedding invitation typography
down here reading,

331
00:27:31,567 --> 00:27:33,944
"almost everyone appreciates the best."

332
00:27:34,278 --> 00:27:37,530
This was everywhere in the fifties, this is
how everything looked in the fifties.

333
00:27:37,531 --> 00:27:42,660
You cut to - this is after helvetica was in
full swing - same product.

334
00:27:42,661 --> 00:27:45,288
No people, no smiling fakery,

335
00:27:45,289 --> 00:27:49,292
just a beautiful big
glass of ice-cold coke.

336
00:27:49,293 --> 00:27:52,378
The slogan underneath: It's the real thing,

337
00:27:52,379 --> 00:27:53,172
penod.

338
00:27:53,173 --> 00:27:55,007
Coke, period.

339
00:27:55,674 --> 00:27:58,217
In helvetica, period.

340
00:27:58,218 --> 00:28:02,513
Any questions? Of course not. Drink coke,
penod.

341
00:28:02,514 --> 00:28:03,515
Simple.

342
00:28:04,558 --> 00:28:06,601
Governments and corporations love
helvetica

343
00:28:06,602 --> 00:28:09,688
because on one hand it makes them seem
neutral and efficient,

344
00:28:10,105 --> 00:28:15,903
but also the smoothness of the letters
makes them seem almost human.

345
00:28:16,445 --> 00:28:19,113
That is a quality they all want to convey

346
00:28:19,114 --> 00:28:22,200
because of course they have the image
they are always fighting

347
00:28:22,201 --> 00:28:25,411
that they are authoritarian they're
bureaucratic,

348
00:28:25,412 --> 00:28:27,997
you lose yourself in them, they're
oppressive.

349
00:28:27,998 --> 00:28:30,333
So instead, by using helvetica

350
00:28:30,334 --> 00:28:34,921
they can come off seeming more
accessible, transparent, and accountable,

351
00:28:34,922 --> 00:28:37,882
which are all the buzzwords for what
corporations

352
00:28:37,883 --> 00:28:40,635
and governments are supposed to be
today.

353
00:28:40,636 --> 00:28:45,056
Now they don't have to be accessible or
accountable or transparent

354
00:28:45,057 --> 00:28:47,935
but they can look that way.

355
00:28:51,563 --> 00:28:55,275
Our tax forms from the IRS are in
helvetica.

356
00:28:56,151 --> 00:28:58,903
The e.P.A. Uses it

357
00:28:58,904 --> 00:29:03,450
now there's someone who wants to look
clean and official and efficient.

358
00:29:30,602 --> 00:29:36,733
Designers, and I think even readers, invest
so much of the surroundings in the typeface.

359
00:29:37,442 --> 00:29:40,403
American apparel uses helvetica and it
looks cheeky.

360
00:29:40,404 --> 00:29:43,197
American airlines uses it and it looks
soben

361
00:29:43,198 --> 00:29:46,492
and it's not just a matter of the weight they
use and the letter spacing and the colors.

362
00:29:46,493 --> 00:29:50,664
There's something about the typeface I think
really invites this sort of open interpretation.

363
00:29:55,377 --> 00:29:56,711
I suppose you could say the typefaces are
either

364
00:29:56,712 --> 00:29:58,432
those that are fully open to interpretation

365
00:29:58,630 --> 00:30:01,133
or merely have one association attached to
them.

366
00:30:01,466 --> 00:30:05,511
A typeface made of icicles or candy canes
or something just says one thing.

367
00:30:05,512 --> 00:30:06,679
And helvetica maybe says everything.

368
00:30:06,680 --> 00:30:08,598
And that's perhaps part of its appeal.

369
00:30:12,019 --> 00:30:15,146
Typography has this real poverty of terms
to describe things.

370
00:30:15,147 --> 00:30:17,940
Beyond x height and cap height and weight
and so on.

371
00:30:17,941 --> 00:30:20,276
I find when Tobias and I work on projects
together

372
00:30:20,277 --> 00:30:23,487
we tend to use a lot of qualitative terms
that are entirely subjective.

373
00:30:23,488 --> 00:30:26,949
Working on the typeface for esquire years
ago, I remember us saying,

374
00:30:26,950 --> 00:30:32,538
I remember my saying, no this has that
saturn 5 rocket early NASA quality.

375
00:30:32,539 --> 00:30:37,668
It needs to have that orange plastic olivetti
typewriter, Roman holiday Espresso feeling.

376
00:30:37,669 --> 00:30:40,254
- I know you got exactly what I was saying.
- I did. -

377
00:30:40,255 --> 00:30:44,550
but it's that there's really no way to
describe the qualitative parts

378
00:30:44,551 --> 00:30:46,719
of a typeface without resorting
to things are fully outside it.

379
00:30:46,720 --> 00:30:50,848
And we're constantly saying, you know,
this has that, it feels kind of Erik satie;

380
00:30:50,849 --> 00:30:52,183
it needs to be debussy.

381
00:30:52,184 --> 00:30:54,560
Or this has a kind of belt and suspenders
look.

382
00:30:54,561 --> 00:30:58,440
It needs to be, you know, much more
elegant... hand-lasted shoe.

383
00:31:00,275 --> 00:31:03,652
I've been collecting these signs for a
couple of years now

384
00:31:03,653 --> 00:31:11,653
and one of my favorites is these signs. I
have a number of these.

385
00:31:12,996 --> 00:31:15,456
This is what the street signs in New York
city used to look like.

386
00:31:15,457 --> 00:31:18,876
This actually functions so much more
clearly

387
00:31:18,877 --> 00:31:22,881
and so much more effectively than what we
see out on the street now.

388
00:31:23,382 --> 00:31:26,300
The sort of classical modernist line on

389
00:31:26,301 --> 00:31:29,929
how aware a reader should be of a
typeface

390
00:31:29,930 --> 00:31:31,972
is that they shouldn't
be aware of it at all.

391
00:31:31,973 --> 00:31:34,141
It should be this crystal goblet

392
00:31:34,142 --> 00:31:38,729
there to just hold and display and organize

393
00:31:38,730 --> 00:31:45,403
the information. But I don't think
it's really quite as simple as that.

394
00:31:45,404 --> 00:31:49,365
I think even if they're not consciously

395
00:31:49,366 --> 00:31:53,786
aware of the typeface they're reading,
they'll certainly be affected by it.

396
00:31:53,787 --> 00:31:59,250
The same way that an actor that's miscast
in a role will affect someone's experience

397
00:31:59,251 --> 00:32:02,628
of a movie or play that they're watching.
They'll still follow the plot,

398
00:32:02,629 --> 00:32:07,509
but, you know, be less convinced or
excited or affected.

399
00:32:07,968 --> 00:32:10,761
I think that typography is similar to that,

400
00:32:10,762 --> 00:32:17,477
where the designer choosing typefaces is
essentially a casting director.

401
00:32:19,604 --> 00:32:21,939
There's very little type in
my world outside of work.

402
00:32:21,940 --> 00:32:27,111
Like everybody else I'm aware of fonts
being used in my environment.

403
00:32:27,112 --> 00:32:30,114
You know, the standing joke that graphic
designers can't see historical movies

404
00:32:30,115 --> 00:32:32,408
because the fonts are always wrong is
certainly true.

405
00:32:32,409 --> 00:32:36,246
It definitely makes the world outside the
office very different.

406
00:32:37,581 --> 00:32:42,668
My fiancé and I were trying to remember
the location of a restaurant

407
00:32:42,669 --> 00:32:47,673
in our neighborhood, and she remembered
it as that new place

408
00:32:47,674 --> 00:32:50,259
that's just a couple blocks down from the
dry cleaner.

409
00:32:50,260 --> 00:32:52,887
I remembered it as that new place just a
couple blocks down from

410
00:32:52,888 --> 00:32:55,265
the place with the bad letter spacing out
front.

411
00:32:56,933 --> 00:32:59,435
Nobody doesn't know what helvetica is,

412
00:32:59,436 --> 00:33:02,897
I mean, at the beginning of our careers
certainly before anybody had a PC or a Mac,

413
00:33:02,898 --> 00:33:04,690
no one knew what fonts were.

414
00:33:04,691 --> 00:33:07,276
I think even then people might have known
what helvetica was.

415
00:33:07,277 --> 00:33:11,405
The fact that it's been so heavily licensed

416
00:33:11,406 --> 00:33:14,617
and made available through these very
populist technologies

417
00:33:14,618 --> 00:33:19,080
has kind of furthered the mythology that
it's the ultimate typeface in some way.

418
00:33:19,456 --> 00:33:22,416
And even for us professionals that's hard
to escape from.

419
00:33:22,417 --> 00:33:23,918
I kind of find myself buying into the idea

420
00:33:23,919 --> 00:33:26,003
that "oh, the sans serif evolved for a
hundred years

421
00:33:26,004 --> 00:33:28,255
and the ultimate expression was
helvetica."

422
00:33:28,256 --> 00:33:31,759
And realizing, wait a minute
that's not quite true, historically

423
00:33:31,760 --> 00:33:34,553
or aesthetically or
culturally or politically.

424
00:33:34,554 --> 00:33:39,433
But there's something about it that does
the feeling of finality to it,

425
00:33:39,434 --> 00:33:43,437
the conclusion of one line of reasoning was
this typeface,

426
00:33:43,438 --> 00:33:47,984
and perhaps everything after it is
secondary in some way.

427
00:35:28,585 --> 00:35:33,881
I'm obviously a typomaniac, which is an
incurable, if not mortal, disease.

428
00:35:33,882 --> 00:35:37,259
I can't explain it I just love, I just like
looking at type,

429
00:35:37,260 --> 00:35:39,596
I just get a total kick out
of it. They are my friends.

430
00:35:39,804 --> 00:35:44,183
Other people look at bottles of wine or
whatever, or girls' bottoms,

431
00:35:44,184 --> 00:35:45,559
I get kicks out of looking at type.

432
00:35:45,560 --> 00:35:48,855
It's a little worrying I must admit,
it's a very nerdish thing to do.

433
00:35:49,022 --> 00:35:50,898
I'm very much a word person.

434
00:35:50,899 --> 00:35:53,734
So that's why typography for me is the
obvious extension.

435
00:35:53,735 --> 00:35:55,487
It just makes my words visible.

436
00:35:56,571 --> 00:36:00,282
A real typeface needs rhythm, needs
contrast; It comes from handwriting.

437
00:36:00,283 --> 00:36:02,368
That's why I can read your handwriting,
and you can read mine.

438
00:36:02,369 --> 00:36:04,620
And I'm sure our handwriting is miles away
from helvetica

439
00:36:04,621 --> 00:36:06,664
or anything that would be considered
legible.

440
00:36:06,665 --> 00:36:09,291
But we can read it because there's a
rhythm to it, there's a contrast to it.

441
00:36:09,292 --> 00:36:10,709
Helvetica hasn't got any of that.

442
00:36:15,799 --> 00:36:20,469
I don't know. What is bad taste ubiquitous?

443
00:36:20,470 --> 00:36:23,222
No, actually, helvetica was a good
typeface at the time.

444
00:36:23,223 --> 00:36:25,933
It really answered a demand.

445
00:36:25,934 --> 00:36:28,394
But now it's become one of those defaults
that,

446
00:36:28,395 --> 00:36:32,232
partly because of the proliferation of the
computer, which is now twenty years,

447
00:36:32,399 --> 00:36:34,233
the PC I mean,

448
00:36:34,234 --> 00:36:39,071
it was the default on the apple macintosh
and then it became the default on windows

449
00:36:39,072 --> 00:36:41,407
which copied everything that apple did, as
you know.

450
00:36:41,408 --> 00:36:45,327
Interface and everything else, and then
they did the clone version, Arial,

451
00:36:45,328 --> 00:36:47,705
which is worse than helvetica but

452
00:36:47,706 --> 00:36:51,458
fills the same purpose I think. Now it's
probably never going to go away

453
00:36:51,459 --> 00:36:56,213
because it's ubiquitous;
It's a default. It's air,

454
00:36:56,214 --> 00:36:59,383
you know, it's just
there. There's no choice.

455
00:36:59,384 --> 00:37:01,885
You have to breathe, so you have to use
helvetica.

456
00:37:01,886 --> 00:37:03,846
It brings style with it;
Every typeface does.

457
00:37:03,847 --> 00:37:05,973
It has a certain,

458
00:37:05,974 --> 00:37:09,059
well, it's like a person, if you
are slightly heavy in the middle

459
00:37:09,060 --> 00:37:11,395
you're not going to walk around in tight t-
shirts. You'd look like an idiot.

460
00:37:11,396 --> 00:37:13,731
And helvetica is heavy in the middle. So it
has a certain,

461
00:37:13,732 --> 00:37:16,316
it needs certain space around it, needs a
lot of white space;

462
00:37:16,317 --> 00:37:20,279
it needs very carefully to be looked at the
weight gradations.

463
00:37:20,280 --> 00:37:23,323
It needs a lot of space sideways also.

464
00:37:23,324 --> 00:37:24,783
Then it's very legible, but

465
00:37:24,784 --> 00:37:28,162
very small and very tightly done and very
lightly as modern designers do,

466
00:37:28,163 --> 00:37:29,872
it's a nightmare, a total nightmare.

467
00:37:29,873 --> 00:37:31,707
I wouldn't say this if I hadn't tried it.

468
00:37:31,708 --> 00:37:35,669
Because all the letters... it's the whole
Swiss ideology;

469
00:37:35,670 --> 00:37:38,338
the guy who designed it tried to make all
the letters look the same.

470
00:37:38,339 --> 00:37:42,468
Hello??? You know, that's called an army.
That's not people.

471
00:37:42,469 --> 00:37:44,511
That's people having the same fucking
helmet on.

472
00:37:44,512 --> 00:37:46,930
It doesn't further individualism.

473
00:37:46,931 --> 00:37:50,267
And the aim with type design always is to
make it individual enough

474
00:37:50,268 --> 00:37:51,477
so that it's interesting,

475
00:37:51,478 --> 00:37:55,147
but of course ninety-five percent of any
alphabet has to look like the other alphabet

476
00:37:55,148 --> 00:37:56,828
otherwise you wouldn't be able to read it.

477
00:38:01,946 --> 00:38:04,364
I've never sort of woken up with a typeface
coming out,

478
00:38:04,365 --> 00:38:07,159
you know, like some people... I've got to
do this, and they go to their,

479
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:09,871
whatever, their easel, and these amazing
brush strokes.

480
00:38:10,747 --> 00:38:12,706
I don't have that urge.

481
00:38:12,707 --> 00:38:15,027
You know, I wake up and usually I want to
go back to sleep.

482
00:38:15,794 --> 00:38:18,003
I mean, everybody puts their history into
their work.

483
00:38:18,004 --> 00:38:21,924
I certainly know that when I draw
something it has

484
00:38:21,925 --> 00:38:25,260
I'm fast, I'm loud, I'm chaotic,

485
00:38:25,261 --> 00:38:30,724
I'm not very rule based, even though I'm
German and I love rules,

486
00:38:30,725 --> 00:38:36,021
I'm a gemini, I had my birthday yesterday,
so I'm all over the place essentially.

487
00:38:36,022 --> 00:38:39,024
I'm always on time, but a year late, you
know what I mean,

488
00:38:39,025 --> 00:38:41,276
but then I'm on the second.

489
00:38:41,277 --> 00:38:45,864
So I have this horrible thing, which comes
out in my typefaces.

490
00:38:45,865 --> 00:38:48,367
They're never perfect. They always have a
little edge

491
00:38:48,368 --> 00:38:51,037
in the sense that I leave them alone when I
get bored with them.

492
00:38:51,621 --> 00:38:55,142
I know there's people who hate me, who would
never use one of my typefaces in a million years

493
00:38:55,166 --> 00:38:58,502
and vice versa, people who would use any
typeface I design

494
00:38:58,503 --> 00:39:01,046
not because it's good for
them or it fits the purpose,

495
00:39:01,047 --> 00:39:03,090
simply because I did it.

496
00:39:03,091 --> 00:39:06,760
I think we all do that. Certain bands I buy
every cd from them;

497
00:39:06,761 --> 00:39:08,095
some of them are crap.

498
00:39:08,096 --> 00:39:09,680
But I buy it because I've always bought
their cds

499
00:39:09,681 --> 00:39:10,765
or their music.

500
00:39:12,559 --> 00:39:15,770
Why do people buy certain things? The
brand rubs off on them.

501
00:39:16,771 --> 00:39:18,355
And typefaces are a brand.

502
00:39:18,356 --> 00:39:23,278
You're telling an audience, this is for
you, by using a certain typographic voice.

503
00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:27,364
You'd recognize a Marlboro brand two
miles away

504
00:39:27,365 --> 00:39:29,116
because they use a typeface that they only
use

505
00:39:29,117 --> 00:39:33,245
you can buy it; I have it; Anyone can, it's
called Neo contact. Anybody can buy it,

506
00:39:33,246 --> 00:39:35,122
but Marlboro have made the typeface
theirs.

507
00:39:35,123 --> 00:39:37,916
You can recognize any Marlboro ad from
miles away

508
00:39:37,917 --> 00:39:40,043
because of that stupid typeface.

509
00:39:40,044 --> 00:39:43,006
If they'd used helvetica... hello??? It
wouldn't quite work.

510
00:40:15,455 --> 00:40:19,584
The way something is presented will define
the way you react to it.

511
00:40:21,669 --> 00:40:26,633
So you can take the same message and
present it in three different typefaces,

512
00:40:27,467 --> 00:40:31,845
and the response to that, the immediate
emotional response will be different.

513
00:40:31,846 --> 00:40:36,058
And the choice of typeface is the prime
weapon,

514
00:40:36,059 --> 00:40:39,395
if you want, in that communication.

515
00:40:40,355 --> 00:40:47,152
And I say weapon largely because with
commercial marketing and advertising,

516
00:40:47,153 --> 00:40:52,866
the way a message is dressed is going to define
our reaction to that message in the advertising.

517
00:40:52,867 --> 00:40:56,370
So if it says, buy these jeans, and it's a
grunge font,

518
00:40:56,371 --> 00:41:01,249
you would expect it to be some kind of
hppedjeans

519
00:41:01,250 --> 00:41:06,338
or to be sold in some kind of underground
clothing store.

520
00:41:06,339 --> 00:41:09,925
If you see that same message in helvetica,

521
00:41:09,926 --> 00:41:12,427
you know, it's probably on sale at gap.

522
00:41:12,428 --> 00:41:16,068
You know it's going to be clean, that you're
going to fit in, you're not going to stand out.

523
00:41:17,892 --> 00:41:21,812
All of us, I would suggest, are prompted in
subliminal ways.

524
00:41:21,813 --> 00:41:29,277
Maybe the feeling you have when you see a particular
typographic choices used on a piece of packaging,

525
00:41:29,278 --> 00:41:33,323
is just, I like the look of that, that
feels good, that's my kind of product.

526
00:41:33,324 --> 00:41:37,412
But that's the type
casting its secret spell.

527
00:41:49,173 --> 00:41:53,928
In a way, helvetica is a club.
It's a Mark of membership;

528
00:41:54,220 --> 00:41:57,097
it's a badge that says we're part of modern
society,

529
00:41:57,098 --> 00:42:00,600
we share the same ideals.

530
00:42:00,601 --> 00:42:05,231
It's well-rounded, it's not going to be
damaging or dangerous.

531
00:42:07,233 --> 00:42:12,822
Helvetica has almost like a perfect balance
of push and pull in its letters,

532
00:42:13,197 --> 00:42:17,034
and that perfect balance
sort of is saying to us,

533
00:42:17,035 --> 00:42:19,120
well not sort of, it is saying to us,

534
00:42:19,746 --> 00:42:24,791
don't worry, any of the problems you're
having, or problems in the world,

535
00:42:24,792 --> 00:42:27,753
or problems getting through the subway or
finding a bathroom,

536
00:42:27,754 --> 00:42:31,840
all those problems aren't going
to spill over, they'll be contained,

537
00:42:31,841 --> 00:42:35,344
and in fact maybe they don't exist.

538
00:42:45,188 --> 00:42:50,234
What I like is if this
very serious typeface

539
00:42:50,443 --> 00:42:54,696
tells you the do's and
don'ts of street life,

540
00:42:54,697 --> 00:42:58,659
and it must be helvetica at that moment.

541
00:43:05,333 --> 00:43:08,627
The image of helvetica as the corporate
typeface

542
00:43:08,628 --> 00:43:12,839
made it the so-called typeface of
capitalism,

543
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:15,634
which I would actually reject and say

544
00:43:15,635 --> 00:43:18,721
it's the typeface of socialism

545
00:43:19,222 --> 00:43:27,222
because it is available all over and it's
inviting dilettantes and amateurs and

546
00:43:27,396 --> 00:43:32,192
everybody to do typography,

547
00:43:32,193 --> 00:43:39,492
to create their own type designs, and I
think that's a good thing.

548
00:43:51,587 --> 00:43:55,715
And I think I'm right calling helvetica the
perfume of the city.

549
00:43:55,716 --> 00:43:59,845
It's just something we don't notice usually

550
00:43:59,846 --> 00:44:03,640
but we would miss very much if it wouldn't
be there.

551
00:44:03,641 --> 00:44:08,979
I think it's quite amazing that a typeface
can advance to such a status

552
00:44:08,980 --> 00:44:10,898
in our lives.

553
00:44:17,613 --> 00:44:22,742
As is always the case with any style,
there's a law of diminishing returns.

554
00:44:22,743 --> 00:44:25,453
The more you see it, the more the public
seesil

555
00:44:25,454 --> 00:44:30,333
the more the designer uses those
typographic and graphic solutions,

556
00:44:30,334 --> 00:44:35,381
the more familiar, predictable, and
ultimately dull they become.

557
00:44:37,884 --> 00:44:44,014
By the time I started as a designer, it sort
of seemed there was only one trick in town,

558
00:44:44,015 --> 00:44:46,516
which was like, what can you use instead
of helvetica.

559
00:44:46,517 --> 00:44:48,768
You know, abh, anything but helvetica.

560
00:44:48,769 --> 00:44:51,021
And you do need lot of sans serif
typefaces,

561
00:44:51,022 --> 00:44:55,275
but it seemed like helvetica had just been
used so much and overused so much

562
00:44:55,276 --> 00:44:58,445
and associated with so many big, faceless
things

563
00:44:58,446 --> 00:45:02,991
that it had lost all its capacity
even, to my eyes at least, to look nice.

564
00:45:02,992 --> 00:45:06,286
And by the seventies, especially in
america,

565
00:45:06,287 --> 00:45:09,164
you start to get a reaction against,

566
00:45:09,165 --> 00:45:13,210
what it seems to those designers is the
conformity,

567
00:45:13,211 --> 00:45:17,422
the kind of dull blanket of sameness

568
00:45:17,423 --> 00:45:20,300
that this way of designing is imposing on
the world.

569
00:45:20,301 --> 00:45:23,178
So something that had come out of
idealism

570
00:45:23,179 --> 00:45:27,808
has by this time become merely routine,
and there's a need for a change.

571
00:45:36,150 --> 00:45:38,568
You come into design,

572
00:45:38,569 --> 00:45:42,155
at the point that you start out in history,

573
00:45:42,156 --> 00:45:43,823
without knowing that you're starting out in
history,

574
00:45:43,824 --> 00:45:48,620
and often you don't have a sense of what
came before you and how it got there,

575
00:45:48,621 --> 00:45:50,956
and you certainly don't know what's going
to come after.

576
00:45:50,957 --> 00:45:56,628
And when I walked into design as a
student at Tyler school of art,

577
00:45:56,629 --> 00:46:02,842
what struck me was sort of two separate
cultures of design.

578
00:46:02,843 --> 00:46:05,553
One was the corporate culture,

579
00:46:05,554 --> 00:46:09,474
and the corporate culture was the visual
language of big corporations,

580
00:46:09,475 --> 00:46:12,560
and at that time they were persuasively
helvetica.

581
00:46:12,561 --> 00:46:15,897
They looked alike, they looked a little
fascistic to me.

582
00:46:15,898 --> 00:46:18,608
They were clean, it reminded me of
cleaning up your room.

583
00:46:18,609 --> 00:46:24,197
I felt like, this was some conspiracy of my
mother's, to make me keep the house clean,

584
00:46:24,198 --> 00:46:28,785
that all my messy room adolescent
rebellion was coming back at me

585
00:46:28,786 --> 00:46:32,706
in the form of helvetica, and I had to
overthrow it.

586
00:46:32,707 --> 00:46:36,836
Hey, I got some printouts of the stuff from
last night.

587
00:46:37,628 --> 00:46:40,297
I also was morally opposed to helvetica,

588
00:46:40,298 --> 00:46:45,010
because I viewed the big corporations that
were slathered in helvetica

589
00:46:45,011 --> 00:46:47,804
as sponsors of the Vietnam war.

590
00:46:47,805 --> 00:46:50,265
So therefore, if you used helvetica,

591
00:46:50,266 --> 00:46:52,851
it meant that you were in favor of the
Vietnam war,

592
00:46:52,852 --> 00:46:54,687
so how could you use it?

593
00:46:58,149 --> 00:47:03,403
What looked cool to me at that point were
record album covers, zig-zag rolling papers,

594
00:47:03,404 --> 00:47:06,781
the accoutrements of dope life and
counterculture,

595
00:47:06,782 --> 00:47:12,705
obviously underground newspapers and
magazines, and pushpin studios.

596
00:47:13,372 --> 00:47:18,501
Pushpin studios was the height of, at the
time I was in college,

597
00:47:18,502 --> 00:47:23,757
everybody's ambition. To work there, to do
work that was as inspiring as their work,

598
00:47:23,758 --> 00:47:29,763
because it seemed fresh and alive and
witty and content-laden,

599
00:47:29,764 --> 00:47:34,809
aside from the fact that Seymour chwast
and Milton glazer could really draw.

600
00:47:34,810 --> 00:47:38,272
And I wanted to make work that looked like
that.

601
00:47:39,732 --> 00:47:43,026
When I was at Tyler, I wanted to be an
illustrator,

602
00:47:43,027 --> 00:47:45,820
and I had a teacher named stanislaw
zagorski.

603
00:47:45,821 --> 00:47:51,326
And I never knew what to do with the
typography on my designs.

604
00:47:51,327 --> 00:47:53,995
We would make book covers and record
covers as school projects,

605
00:47:53,996 --> 00:47:59,376
and I'd go to the local art store, I'd go to
Sam flax, and I'd buy helvetica as press type,

606
00:47:59,377 --> 00:48:03,630
and I'd rub it down in the corner of the album the way
I thought it was supposed to be, kind of flush left.

607
00:48:03,631 --> 00:48:07,300
And of course it would never line up
properly and thing would crackle and break

608
00:48:07,301 --> 00:48:08,635
and it'd be terrible.

609
00:48:08,636 --> 00:48:14,307
And zagorski told me to let go of the press
type,

610
00:48:14,308 --> 00:48:16,644
and illustrate the type.

611
00:48:19,605 --> 00:48:24,692
And it hadn't dawned on me that
typography could have personality

612
00:48:24,693 --> 00:48:26,320
the way drawing did.

613
00:48:28,948 --> 00:48:32,325
I realized that type had spirit and could
convey mood,

614
00:48:32,326 --> 00:48:35,538
and that it could be your own medium,

615
00:48:35,704 --> 00:48:40,668
that it was its own palate, a broad
palate to express all kinds of things.

616
00:48:46,424 --> 00:48:52,095
So I painted this cover the aigaannual,

617
00:48:52,096 --> 00:48:55,932
and the title of the aigaannual was
graphic design u.S.A.

618
00:48:55,933 --> 00:48:58,560
And I decided I would
take the title literally

619
00:48:58,561 --> 00:49:02,397
and sort of analyze what graphic design
u.S.A. Was,

620
00:49:02,398 --> 00:49:07,694
so I decided what I'd do is list
every state in the United States,

621
00:49:07,695 --> 00:49:10,405
and the percentage of people who used
helvetica.

622
00:49:10,406 --> 00:49:15,952
And I didn't have any scientific evidence of knowing
what percentage of people in each state used helvetica,

623
00:49:15,953 --> 00:49:20,290
so I decided to base it on the last Reagan
election.

624
00:49:20,291 --> 00:49:23,042
So that the states that went for Reagan

625
00:49:23,043 --> 00:49:26,881
all had more than 50% of the people who
used helvetica.

626
00:49:27,548 --> 00:49:30,091
[If helvetica was the typeface of the
Vietnam war,

627
00:49:31,886 --> 00:49:33,511
The Iraqi war?

628
00:49:33,512 --> 00:49:35,514
Helvetica.

629
00:49:37,975 --> 00:49:41,936
Same time period, I mean it is, it's the
same, it repeated.

630
00:49:41,937 --> 00:49:45,191
That's why we're there. Helvetica caused
it.

631
00:49:47,276 --> 00:49:51,738
And so in the postmodern period,
designers were breaking things up.

632
00:49:51,739 --> 00:49:56,451
They wanted to get away from the orderly,
clean, smooth surface of design

633
00:49:56,452 --> 00:50:00,288
the horrible slickness
of it all, as they saw it

634
00:50:00,289 --> 00:50:03,250
and produce something that had vitality.

635
00:50:13,427 --> 00:50:17,430
I myself got fairly disappointed

636
00:50:17,431 --> 00:50:20,308
with modernism in general.

637
00:50:20,309 --> 00:50:22,852
It simply became boring.

638
00:50:22,853 --> 00:50:26,439
If I see a brochure now, with lots of white
space

639
00:50:26,440 --> 00:50:30,026
that has like six lines of
helvetica up on the top

640
00:50:30,027 --> 00:50:35,365
and a little abstract logo on the bottom

641
00:50:35,366 --> 00:50:39,619
and a picture of a businessman walking
somewhere,

642
00:50:39,620 --> 00:50:45,250
the overall communication that says to me
is,

643
00:50:45,251 --> 00:50:50,005
do not read me, because I will bore the
shit out of you

644
00:50:50,881 --> 00:50:53,758
not just visually, but also in content

645
00:50:53,759 --> 00:50:58,222
because the content will likely say the
same as it says to me visually.

646
00:51:01,976 --> 00:51:07,231
I was in terrible rock bands when I was
fifteen, sixteen, seventeen,

647
00:51:08,023 --> 00:51:14,153
and I think through that experience got
close to the album cover

648
00:51:14,154 --> 00:51:18,492
and essentially I went to art school
because of album covers

649
00:51:19,535 --> 00:51:24,957
I probably was the last generation who got
taught doing everything by hand,

650
00:51:25,332 --> 00:51:30,045
so you know, we drew 10pt. Type with a
brush.

651
00:51:31,088 --> 00:51:38,052
In general, I was always fairly bored, you
know, looking at type books

652
00:51:38,053 --> 00:51:43,391
and deciding over and over again which
type to pick for a certain project.

653
00:51:43,392 --> 00:51:47,313
It just didn't seem a
very interesting task to do.

654
00:51:50,649 --> 00:51:55,612
So here and there I think with the records,
with the cd covers,

655
00:51:55,613 --> 00:51:58,364
we started to do our own type

656
00:51:58,365 --> 00:52:03,411
and I think there was one instance, it was
for a Lou Reed cover,

657
00:52:03,412 --> 00:52:07,541
where this hand drawn typography
resonated,

658
00:52:08,459 --> 00:52:13,796
and numerous projects came out in that
vein, in all sorts of directions.

659
00:52:13,797 --> 00:52:17,968
You know, in a more funny direction and in
a more serious direction,

660
00:52:19,053 --> 00:52:26,435
where one time an intern carved a hand
type into my skin for a lecture poster.

661
00:52:27,978 --> 00:52:31,731
The type in an instant, in a single image,

662
00:52:31,732 --> 00:52:35,902
tells the story of its making,
tells you about its process,

663
00:52:35,903 --> 00:52:39,573
in a very elegant way, in a very fast way.

664
00:52:41,158 --> 00:52:47,205
That typography strangely became so well
known, just within the design community

665
00:52:47,206 --> 00:52:50,668
of course, that some people thought that's
all we do,

666
00:52:52,586 --> 00:52:55,130
which thankfully is not the case.

667
00:53:07,309 --> 00:53:13,607
Well, I always thought that approach of people
using only three or four typefaces very suspect.

668
00:53:14,191 --> 00:53:17,860
I think this could be interesting
to do for a single project

669
00:53:17,861 --> 00:53:24,159
as an exercise to put up additional
limitations in order to focus yourself.

670
00:53:24,827 --> 00:53:28,831
But as a strategy over a lifetime

671
00:53:30,499 --> 00:53:32,458
I think it's akin to a writer saying,

672
00:53:32,459 --> 00:53:35,294
I'm only going to write in three or four
words.

673
00:53:35,295 --> 00:53:39,340
Yes, you could probably do it, but for one
why would you,

674
00:53:39,341 --> 00:53:47,099
and for the second would it really yield an
interesting body of work over a lifetime?

675
00:54:01,405 --> 00:54:05,491
Designers wanted to express their
subjectivity,

676
00:54:05,492 --> 00:54:07,660
their own feelings about the world,

677
00:54:07,661 --> 00:54:11,372
their sense that they had something to say
through design,

678
00:54:11,373 --> 00:54:14,500
through the design choices they made.

679
00:54:14,501 --> 00:54:16,878
And of course this caused controversy.

680
00:54:16,879 --> 00:54:23,468
If you take a figure like massimo vignelli,
who'd been one of the sixties' high priests,

681
00:54:23,469 --> 00:54:25,511
with his company unimark,

682
00:54:25,512 --> 00:54:30,099
it's right there in the name, unimark, the
idea of a uniform kind of expression.

683
00:54:30,100 --> 00:54:32,685
When he looked at this new work,

684
00:54:32,686 --> 00:54:36,522
this expressive, subjective, wayward,

685
00:54:36,523 --> 00:54:40,026
to his way of thinking
irrational new way of designing,

686
00:54:40,027 --> 00:54:43,070
it seemed like the barbarians were not only
at the gate,

687
00:54:43,071 --> 00:54:45,698
but they'd stormed through and they'd
taken over.

688
00:54:45,699 --> 00:54:50,620
In the '70s, the young generation was after
psychedehctype,

689
00:54:50,621 --> 00:54:52,747
and all the junk that you could find.

690
00:54:52,748 --> 00:54:57,710
And also in the '80s, with their minds
completely confused

691
00:54:57,711 --> 00:55:03,424
by that... disease that was called
postmodernism,

692
00:55:03,425 --> 00:55:08,012
people were just going around like
chickens without their heads,

693
00:55:08,013 --> 00:55:15,520
by using all kinds of typefaces that came
around that could say "not modern".

694
00:55:15,521 --> 00:55:18,856
They didn't know what they were caring for,

695
00:55:18,857 --> 00:55:21,734
they only knew about what they were
against.

696
00:55:21,735 --> 00:55:23,904
And what they were against was helvetica.

697
00:55:37,584 --> 00:55:40,503
I had no formal training in the field,

698
00:55:40,504 --> 00:55:44,549
in my case I never learned all the things I
wasn't supposed to do.

699
00:55:44,550 --> 00:55:47,469
I just did what made sense to me.

700
00:55:52,099 --> 00:55:54,643
I was just experimenting really.

701
00:55:55,894 --> 00:55:59,689
So when people started getting really
upset, I didn't really understand why.

702
00:55:59,690 --> 00:56:02,900
I'd say, "what's the big deal? What are you
talking about?"

703
00:56:02,901 --> 00:56:06,655
And it was many years later that
somebody explained to me,

704
00:56:06,864 --> 00:56:08,948
probably better than I can explain it now,

705
00:56:08,949 --> 00:56:14,161
is that basically there was this group that
spent a lot of time trying to organize things,

706
00:56:14,162 --> 00:56:16,247
and get some kind of system going,

707
00:56:16,248 --> 00:56:19,418
and they saw me as coming in and
throwing that out the window.

708
00:56:20,210 --> 00:56:24,171
Which I might have done, but it wasn't the
starting point

709
00:56:24,172 --> 00:56:25,715
and it wasn't the plan.

710
00:56:25,716 --> 00:56:33,515
Only much later did I learn the terms
modernism, and this and that.

711
00:56:33,932 --> 00:56:37,226
Raygun magazine was very much
experimental,

712
00:56:37,227 --> 00:56:41,272
it was completely experimental. Every
issue we'd try a lot of things

713
00:56:41,273 --> 00:56:43,649
and a lot of them worked,

714
00:56:43,650 --> 00:56:45,151
and a lot of them didn't work.

715
00:56:45,152 --> 00:56:48,821
I never saw proofs so a lot of times there
were just mistakes,

716
00:56:48,822 --> 00:56:51,449
flat-out mistakes, that people would write
long essays on

717
00:56:51,450 --> 00:56:56,078
why I did this black type on
a black boot, or something.

718
00:56:56,079 --> 00:56:58,665
No, I never saw a proof, what are you
talking about?

719
00:56:59,374 --> 00:57:03,836
It's very hard to do the more subjective,
interpretive stuff well.

720
00:57:03,837 --> 00:57:06,881
You know, I can teach anybody off the
street

721
00:57:06,882 --> 00:57:10,760
how to design a reasonable business card
or newsletter.

722
00:57:10,761 --> 00:57:14,764
But if I bring the same group
off the street and play a cd

723
00:57:14,765 --> 00:57:17,642
and say, "okay, now let's interpret that
music for a cover,

724
00:57:17,643 --> 00:57:20,853
well 9 out of 10 are going to be lost

725
00:57:20,854 --> 00:57:23,189
and are going to do something corny and
expected,

726
00:57:23,190 --> 00:57:26,150
and one person is going to do something
amazing

727
00:57:26,151 --> 00:57:29,904
because that music spoke to them and it
sent them in some direction

728
00:57:29,905 --> 00:57:34,575
that nobody else could go. And that's the
area to me where it gets more interesting

729
00:57:34,576 --> 00:57:37,703
and exciting, and more emotional.

730
00:57:37,704 --> 00:57:40,290
And that's where the best work comes
from.

731
00:57:41,917 --> 00:57:45,336
This is an article on
the singer Bryan ferry,

732
00:57:45,337 --> 00:57:49,882
and when I read the article it was very much
like so many of these others I had read,

733
00:57:49,883 --> 00:57:53,761
and I was like, oh man, how disappointing,
how boring.

734
00:57:53,762 --> 00:57:57,556
And I went through all my fonts, which at
the time would've been hundreds and hundreds,

735
00:57:57,557 --> 00:58:00,894
uhm, well, it still is for that matter, and

736
00:58:01,269 --> 00:58:07,400
didn't find one that seemed to fit my
disgust and boredom with this article.

737
00:58:07,401 --> 00:58:09,902
And I finally came to the bottom and there
was dingbats,

738
00:58:09,903 --> 00:58:13,406
which of course now it's zapf dingbats so
it's literally the last one.

739
00:58:13,407 --> 00:58:17,244
And I was like, well it's boring and not
worth reading,

740
00:58:17,786 --> 00:58:19,578
why not do it in zapf dingbats?

741
00:58:19,579 --> 00:58:24,083
It's a font. So it's all set in dingbats,

742
00:58:24,084 --> 00:58:28,713
it is the actual font, you could highlight
it and make it helvetica or something

743
00:58:28,714 --> 00:58:30,423
and you'd be able to read it

744
00:58:30,424 --> 00:58:33,260
but it really wouldn't be
worthwhile, it's not very well-written.

745
00:58:35,012 --> 00:58:37,555
Don't confuse legibility with
communication.

746
00:58:37,556 --> 00:58:40,683
Just because something's legible, doesn't
mean it communicates.

747
00:58:40,684 --> 00:58:44,187
And more importantly doesn't mean it
communicates the right thing.

748
00:58:45,522 --> 00:58:49,859
And vice-versa, something that may be
difficult to initially read

749
00:58:49,860 --> 00:58:51,944
could be sending a completely different
message

750
00:58:51,945 --> 00:58:54,864
that is valid for where it's being used,

751
00:58:54,865 --> 00:58:58,951
and that may require a little more time or
the involvement of the reader.

752
00:58:58,952 --> 00:59:03,748
But it almost seems stronger the other way,

753
00:59:03,749 --> 00:59:10,504
if something is a very important message
and it's set in a boring, non-descript way,

754
00:59:10,505 --> 00:59:13,340
the message can be lost.

755
00:59:13,341 --> 00:59:15,844
I mean that doesn't say "caffeinated"!

756
00:59:16,386 --> 00:59:18,263
It's just like, hello?

757
00:59:22,601 --> 00:59:25,811
It's just sitting there! There's nothing
caffeinated about it!

758
00:59:25,812 --> 00:59:28,814
There's nothing "extramarital" about that.

759
00:59:28,815 --> 00:59:31,777
There's no "sunshine" here.

760
00:59:32,778 --> 00:59:35,864
That's no fun, that's not a fun sandlot.

761
00:59:36,156 --> 00:59:38,157
Where's the explosion?

762
00:59:38,158 --> 00:59:40,117
This could be the first date.

763
00:59:40,118 --> 00:59:43,497
This might be close, these buses are kind
of boring.

764
00:59:44,748 --> 00:59:49,043
There's a very thin line between simple
and clean and powerful,

765
00:59:49,044 --> 00:59:52,756
and simple and clean and boring.

766
00:59:54,091 --> 00:59:59,054
That was sort of the rise of what's
referred to as grunge typography,

767
00:59:59,554 --> 01:00:04,892
and that became an all-consuming
aesthetic for two, three, four, five years

768
01:00:04,893 --> 01:00:09,021
as that trend worked its way down from the
masters who originated it

769
01:00:09,022 --> 01:00:13,484
to anyone who sort of already had a
tendency to make mistakes

770
01:00:13,485 --> 01:00:16,362
and all of sudden found that they looked
good now instead of incompetent,

771
01:00:16,363 --> 01:00:17,963
which is how they looked the day before.

772
01:00:19,157 --> 01:00:23,536
Typography was so broken by the end of
the grunge period,

773
01:00:23,537 --> 01:00:26,080
just lying there in a twisted heap,

774
01:00:26,081 --> 01:00:29,959
all rules cast aside, no apparent way
forward,

775
01:00:29,960 --> 01:00:35,172
that all those designers could perhaps do
by the late nineties was to go back

776
01:00:35,173 --> 01:00:38,634
to return to an earlier way of designing,

777
01:00:38,635 --> 01:00:42,055
but with a new set of
theories to support it.

778
01:01:09,583 --> 01:01:14,295
For us, modernism does have a more
subversive side.

779
01:01:14,296 --> 01:01:16,672
I think that the whole image of modernism

780
01:01:16,673 --> 01:01:21,385
as something that is primarily concerned
with functionalism,

781
01:01:21,386 --> 01:01:25,681
utilitarianism, that is something that
emerged much later,

782
01:01:25,682 --> 01:01:28,309
that is a sort of a late-modernist thing.

783
01:01:28,310 --> 01:01:30,269
I think the early-modernist movements,

784
01:01:30,270 --> 01:01:33,397
like dadaism, futurism, surrealism,

785
01:01:33,398 --> 01:01:36,775
all had their more subversive sides

786
01:01:36,776 --> 01:01:39,695
and their more, how do you call it,

787
01:01:39,696 --> 01:01:44,659
dialectical sides, so they went against
something.

788
01:01:50,498 --> 01:01:54,001
It's not that we are against that
experimentation

789
01:01:54,002 --> 01:02:00,717
that people like David Carson and emigré
and fuse, that Neville Brody did.

790
01:02:00,967 --> 01:02:04,386
We think what we do is a sort of an
extension of that.

791
01:02:04,387 --> 01:02:09,433
All that hunting to the next typeface every
time, it took a lot of energy,

792
01:02:09,434 --> 01:02:13,604
and I can still remember as students that
we were really disappointed

793
01:02:13,605 --> 01:02:17,692
because you wanted to use a certain typeface
and then you saw somebody else had used it,

794
01:02:18,068 --> 01:02:20,694
and then you couldn't use it because you
wanted to be original

795
01:02:20,695 --> 01:02:25,158
and with helvetica this whole problem is
non-existent because everybody's using helvetica.

796
01:02:26,243 --> 01:02:31,997
A lot of people see the way a young generation
of designers uses a typeface such as helvetica

797
01:02:31,998 --> 01:02:35,960
as a more superficial way, as a sort of
appropriation of a style.

798
01:02:35,961 --> 01:02:38,879
I think we would very much disagree with
that.

799
01:02:38,880 --> 01:02:41,298
I think all three of us grew up in the '70s

800
01:02:41,299 --> 01:02:47,013
in the Netherlands which was dominated
by the last moment of late modernism.

801
01:02:47,347 --> 01:02:50,933
For example, the city I was born in and
grew up in, Rotterdam,

802
01:02:50,934 --> 01:02:54,812
the logotype was designed by wim
crouwel,

803
01:02:54,813 --> 01:02:57,815
the stamps were designed by crouwel,

804
01:02:57,816 --> 01:02:59,733
the telephone book was designed by
crouwel,

805
01:02:59,734 --> 01:03:01,860
the atlas that we used in school was
designed by crouwel.

806
01:03:01,861 --> 01:03:07,074
So for us it is almost like
a natural mother tongue,

807
01:03:07,075 --> 01:03:08,701
that's something really natural.

808
01:03:08,702 --> 01:03:12,746
It's not that we... I mean, a lot of people
think you sort of study it

809
01:03:12,747 --> 01:03:15,374
from books and then copy it or something,
but

810
01:03:15,375 --> 01:03:19,087
I would really say that it's almost in our
blood.

811
01:03:20,547 --> 01:03:24,133
It's also funny because a lot of people
connect helvetica

812
01:03:24,134 --> 01:03:27,261
sometimes with the dangers of
globalization

813
01:03:27,262 --> 01:03:29,305
and standardization.

814
01:03:29,306 --> 01:03:32,099
I'm not afraid for that quality at all

815
01:03:32,100 --> 01:03:36,228
because I'm just know that everybody can
put a twist on it.

816
01:03:36,229 --> 01:03:39,231
I think you can put as much nationality

817
01:03:39,232 --> 01:03:43,235
in the spacing of a typeface as in the
typeface itself.

818
01:03:43,236 --> 01:03:47,531
And I think the way people like crouwel
use helvetica is typically Dutch, I think,

819
01:03:47,532 --> 01:03:52,786
and that's why I'm never really impressed
with the argument

820
01:03:52,787 --> 01:03:57,751
that helvetica is a sort of global monster.

821
01:05:44,357 --> 01:05:48,194
I'm not one of those people who is a real
typographer,

822
01:05:48,611 --> 01:05:51,238
I don't know all the fancy
words for all the letters,

823
01:05:51,239 --> 01:05:56,160
and the sort of ligatures and ascenders
and descenders and all that kind of thing.

824
01:05:56,161 --> 01:05:59,746
I just more, sort of,
react to certain things,

825
01:05:59,747 --> 01:06:02,624
and just do what I feel is right,

826
01:06:02,625 --> 01:06:06,171
so I'm never sort of a classical type guy.

827
01:06:09,257 --> 01:06:12,635
So I get obsessed about things, I collect
things,

828
01:06:13,178 --> 01:06:17,431
you know, I've got so many bits and scraps of
paper, of things that you find on the street,

829
01:06:17,432 --> 01:06:21,935
or wrappers. It's just making something
beautiful out of something very ordinary.

830
01:06:21,936 --> 01:06:24,396
That's what I really enjoy, the ordinary
things

831
01:06:24,397 --> 01:06:29,402
that most people would just gloss over, I
find really beautiful.

832
01:06:35,074 --> 01:06:37,743
The biggest thing for me in terms of design

833
01:06:37,744 --> 01:06:40,746
is to get a sort of emotional response from
a piece.

834
01:06:40,747 --> 01:06:43,249
That's some of the best design, I think.

835
01:06:44,167 --> 01:06:48,420
I see stuff and to me, if it makes me go,

836
01:06:48,421 --> 01:06:51,840
I wish I'd done that, that for me is the
biggest thing, you know.

837
01:06:51,841 --> 01:06:58,348
Or you just get this real whooo,
kind of like, oooh, that's nice.

838
01:07:00,683 --> 01:07:03,728
It's all about that emotional response.

839
01:07:07,190 --> 01:07:13,487
One of the things I've always really wanted
to design is airplane signage,

840
01:07:13,488 --> 01:07:16,031
an identity for an airline.

841
01:07:16,032 --> 01:07:23,163
I'd love to do the uniforms, or you know,
seats and the whole thing, the trucks and

842
01:07:23,164 --> 01:07:26,667
that kind of thing. I think it would be
brilliant.

843
01:07:26,668 --> 01:07:30,671
You know, I've done these twelve-inch
sleeves for so long;

844
01:07:30,672 --> 01:07:33,257
I want to go a little bit bigger scale now.

845
01:07:33,258 --> 01:07:38,096
It's that idea that something's designed to
stand the test of time,

846
01:07:38,471 --> 01:07:42,641
and hopefully some of the things I'm designing
will be still being used in twenty, thirty years.

847
01:07:42,642 --> 01:07:45,103
I'd love to think that.

848
01:07:50,066 --> 01:07:54,486
I got married about three years ago. I did
the wedding invites,

849
01:07:54,487 --> 01:07:58,657
which believe me, is just the worst job you
can ever do as a graphic designer.

850
01:07:58,658 --> 01:08:01,785
I've done other people's wedding invites,
and I'll never do one again.

851
01:08:01,786 --> 01:08:04,289
It's the most stressful job I've ever had,

852
01:08:04,998 --> 01:08:09,501
dealing with mother in laws
is just horrific. But I did ours,

853
01:08:09,502 --> 01:08:12,087
and on the order of service

854
01:08:12,088 --> 01:08:18,844
I did a little credit to give thanks to Max
miedinger for helvetica.

855
01:08:18,845 --> 01:08:24,850
But my wife vetoed that; I
had to take it off the invite.

856
01:08:24,851 --> 01:08:27,186
But it was funny...

857
01:08:33,443 --> 01:08:39,532
I think I fell into the step of
helvetica when I was at Dr.

858
01:08:41,576 --> 01:08:44,704
I always really enjoy using helvetica

859
01:08:45,163 --> 01:08:50,126
because... some people say they use a different
typeface because it gives a different feeling.

860
01:08:50,918 --> 01:08:55,298
And I really enjoy the challenge of making
helvetica speak in different ways.

861
01:08:57,383 --> 01:08:59,801
It's been around for
fifty years, coming up,

862
01:08:59,802 --> 01:09:06,266
and it's just as fresh as it was... obviously,
it wasn't intended to be this cool thing,

863
01:09:06,267 --> 01:09:08,686
but it's just a beautiful font.

864
01:10:14,627 --> 01:10:20,757
Well, we are less obsessed with helvetica

865
01:10:20,758 --> 01:10:22,634
than we used to be.

866
01:10:22,635 --> 01:10:30,392
Yes, we were really obsessed with
helvetica, yet not more so much.

867
01:10:30,393 --> 01:10:36,691
We accepted it somehow... we came to a point
where we accepted that it's just there.

868
01:11:07,680 --> 01:11:09,514
We like restrictions.

869
01:11:09,515 --> 01:11:13,477
We can't operate, we can do nothing
without restrictions.

870
01:11:13,478 --> 01:11:15,938
The more restrictions we have, the more
happy we are.

871
01:11:17,273 --> 01:11:18,690
When we started school,

872
01:11:18,691 --> 01:11:23,153
the influences in graphic design were like
Brody and Carson.

873
01:11:23,154 --> 01:11:29,159
It's only after that we really
looked at Josef mtiller-brockmann's

874
01:11:29,160 --> 01:11:33,039
work, and '60s Swiss typography.

875
01:11:33,790 --> 01:11:36,333
When we started the office we really said

876
01:11:36,334 --> 01:11:40,295
we wanted to look back,

877
01:11:40,296 --> 01:11:45,092
to find more structured design.

878
01:11:46,177 --> 01:11:51,474
For us it's very important to reduce the
elements we use.

879
01:11:52,475 --> 01:11:56,728
When it comes to type, we will only use, if
possible, one typeface,

880
01:11:56,729 --> 01:12:00,316
or two, and if possible
we will use one size.

881
01:12:01,609 --> 01:12:04,402
We don't like humanistic typefaces for
example,

882
01:12:04,403 --> 01:12:07,572
it must be more rational

883
01:12:07,573 --> 01:12:10,243
because otherwise it has too much
expression.

884
01:12:19,752 --> 01:12:24,172
We think that helvetica contains somehow
a design program.

885
01:12:24,173 --> 01:12:27,467
It will lead you to a certain
language also, and this is also

886
01:12:27,468 --> 01:12:32,389
one of the secrets of the success of
helvetica

887
01:12:32,390 --> 01:12:35,475
that in itself it is already

888
01:12:35,476 --> 01:12:38,854
it has a certain style, a certain aesthetic

889
01:12:38,855 --> 01:12:42,107
that you will just use it like that,

890
01:12:42,108 --> 01:12:45,443
because of the typeface, because the
typeface wants it like that.

891
01:12:45,444 --> 01:12:48,280
You will do what the typeface wants you to
do.

892
01:12:48,281 --> 01:12:51,324
If you are not a good designer,
or if you are not a designer,

893
01:12:51,325 --> 01:12:56,289
just use helvetica bold in one size,

894
01:12:56,706 --> 01:13:01,794
like for a flyer... it looks good.

895
01:13:57,141 --> 01:14:00,518
So it may very well be that when it comes
to trends,

896
01:14:00,519 --> 01:14:05,441
at least in graphic design, we've reached
sort of the end of history.

897
01:14:05,900 --> 01:14:10,195
The pendulum that swings back and forth doesn't
have any more directions it can swing in.

898
01:14:10,196 --> 01:14:18,196
The final trend may simply be the completely
Democratic distribution of the means of production

899
01:14:18,454 --> 01:14:22,165
to anyone who wants it or anyone who can
afford it.

900
01:14:22,166 --> 01:14:25,168
You can have a music studio for a couple
thousand bucks,

901
01:14:25,169 --> 01:14:28,380
you can have a film studio for ten grand,

902
01:14:28,381 --> 01:14:33,301
you definitely can be a designer with one
or two thousand dollars,

903
01:14:33,302 --> 01:14:37,263
and have basically

904
01:14:37,264 --> 01:14:40,350
similar tools as the people
who do this for a living.

905
01:14:40,351 --> 01:14:43,895
If all these people have the tools to make
good design,

906
01:14:43,896 --> 01:14:45,438
they realize that it ain't that easy.

907
01:14:45,439 --> 01:14:48,733
It's not just opening a template in corel
draw or in powerpoint.

908
01:14:48,734 --> 01:14:53,405
It's not about having the latest version of
whatever program.

909
01:14:53,406 --> 01:14:57,117
If you don't have the eye, if you don't a
sense of design,

910
01:14:57,118 --> 01:15:00,287
the program's not going to give it to you.

911
01:15:00,454 --> 01:15:05,709
I remember, years ago, a friend of mine
who produced radio commercials

912
01:15:05,710 --> 01:15:10,005
had five guys go out in the hallway of CBS
records

913
01:15:10,006 --> 01:15:14,342
and sing the beginning of "round round
get around, I get around"

914
01:15:14,343 --> 01:15:15,552
by the beach boys.

915
01:15:15,553 --> 01:15:19,431
And they really tried, they rehearsed for a
week to get their harmonies right,

916
01:15:19,432 --> 01:15:23,727
and they were the best vocalists who
worked in that department on that floor,

917
01:15:23,728 --> 01:15:24,603
and they loved music.

918
01:15:24,604 --> 01:15:25,604
And they went out and they sang it,

919
01:15:25,605 --> 01:15:27,856
and of course they were totally flat and
sounded horribly...

920
01:15:27,857 --> 01:15:30,734
Terrible. But they'd rehearsed. And then

921
01:15:30,735 --> 01:15:35,071
the voiceover for the commercial said,
"now you can appreciate the beach boys."

922
01:15:35,072 --> 01:15:37,866
And it's really sort of the same thing.

923
01:15:37,867 --> 01:15:42,287
The closer you come to it, and the more
you see it,

924
01:15:42,288 --> 01:15:44,372
the more you appreciate
it when it's terrific.

925
01:15:44,373 --> 01:15:47,292
There are more good, young type
designers

926
01:15:47,293 --> 01:15:52,213
now, by young I mean probably late twenties,
early thirties, than at any time in history.

927
01:15:52,214 --> 01:15:55,592
So who knows what typefaces they will
design

928
01:15:55,593 --> 01:15:57,677
in terms of style and so on. But they'll be
good.

929
01:15:57,678 --> 01:16:02,682
And to my way of thinking, that is a huge
gain,

930
01:16:02,683 --> 01:16:08,189
a huge benefit that comes with this more
Democratic, more accessible technology.

931
01:16:11,400 --> 01:16:13,234
There's just something about helvetica.

932
01:16:13,235 --> 01:16:17,989
Something about the fact that people keep saying
I've come up with an improvement of helvetica.

933
01:16:17,990 --> 01:16:20,701
And it never is really good.

934
01:16:22,036 --> 01:16:26,915
You know, I wonder whether or not somehow there's
some whole undiscovered science of typography

935
01:16:26,916 --> 01:16:30,919
that would sort of say it's not just
because we're used to seeing it,

936
01:16:30,920 --> 01:16:33,505
it's not just because it was
associated with all these things

937
01:16:33,506 --> 01:16:35,924
that we consider authoritative,

938
01:16:35,925 --> 01:16:40,136
but it somehow has this kind of inherent
rightness.

939
01:16:40,137 --> 01:16:44,099
You know, the rightness of the way the
lowercase a meets the curve,

940
01:16:44,100 --> 01:16:46,851
the rightness of the way the g has the
thing that comes down,

941
01:16:46,852 --> 01:16:50,314
the rightness of the way the 0 strokes are
like that instead of that.

942
01:16:50,648 --> 01:16:56,736
I mean, I wouldn't have believed that those
things actually could be right or wrong

943
01:16:56,737 --> 01:16:58,071
as opposed to someone's tastes.

944
01:16:58,072 --> 01:17:03,119
Yet we sort of have nearly fifty years of
history of the thing just sitting there

945
01:17:03,452 --> 01:17:07,915
daring people to fix it. And it seems to be
unfixable.

946
01:17:11,502 --> 01:17:13,711
It's always changing, time is changing,

947
01:17:13,712 --> 01:17:18,049
the appreciation of typefaces is changing
very much.

948
01:17:18,050 --> 01:17:21,261
Why you grab a certain typeface for a
certain job

949
01:17:21,262 --> 01:17:27,935
has a different meaning than we grabbed a
typeface in the fifties for a certain job.

950
01:17:29,979 --> 01:17:34,692
You are always child of your time, and you
cannot step out of that.

951
01:17:40,573 --> 01:17:47,078
What we have is a climate now in which
the very idea of visual communication

952
01:17:47,079 --> 01:17:49,914
and graphic design, if
we still want to call it that,

953
01:17:49,915 --> 01:17:52,750
is accepted by many more people.

954
01:17:52,751 --> 01:17:58,173
They get it. They understand it. They're
starting to see graphic communication

955
01:17:58,174 --> 01:18:01,634
as an expression of their own identity.

956
01:18:01,635 --> 01:18:07,015
And the classic case of this is the social
networking programs

957
01:18:07,016 --> 01:18:12,812
such as MySpace, where you can
customize your profile.

958
01:18:12,813 --> 01:18:15,940
You can change the background, you can
put pictures in,

959
01:18:15,941 --> 01:18:19,235
you can change the typeface to anything
you want,

960
01:18:19,236 --> 01:18:23,615
and those choices, those decisions you
make,

961
01:18:23,616 --> 01:18:28,161
become expressions of who you are. You
start to care about it, in the way

962
01:18:28,162 --> 01:18:32,749
you care about the clothing you're wearing
as an expression of who you are,

963
01:18:32,750 --> 01:18:34,792
or your haircut or whatever,

964
01:18:34,793 --> 01:18:38,880
or how you decorate your apartment-all of
those things.

965
01:18:38,881 --> 01:18:42,884
You know, we accept the idea of identity
being expressed in that way,

966
01:18:42,885 --> 01:18:44,844
through these consumer choices.

967
01:18:44,845 --> 01:18:48,223
Well, now it's happening in the sphere of
visual communication

968
01:18:48,224 --> 01:18:53,686
and there's no reason as the tools become
ever more sophisticated,

969
01:18:53,687 --> 01:18:57,399
why this just won't go on developing,
developing and developing.