Some Words

Perhaps not a major motion picture. Perhaps more of a small documentary with interesting personalities. I had not realized, up until watching Helvetica, a documentary about the typeface of the same name, that there were people who viewed typeface as the forefront of modern culture war. They exist.

While I was in college several of my friends majored in graphic design. I would see them over the summer, while the grumbled about having to go to class to learn about typefaces. But slowly their hatred of the subject seemed to turn into something else, perhaps awe, it has been a long time, and I don’t want to speak for them.

And that is where my knowledge of typefaces ended, until recently. I had a preference for garamond, which I could not explain, but caused me to pick it for a very long time for all of my drafts of anything. Then I read a cutting comment about creative writing majors always using garamond, and I became leery of it, though I did not know where else to turn. My to do list on the computer was in futura for a long time, probably because I was watching a lot of Wes Anderson in the same period.

Beyond the pleasure of hearing people get way too passionate about fonts (one person claims [only half joking] that helvetica caused the Vietnam war), watching this documentary was very visually satisfying. There were all sorts of interesting uses of fonts, and the footage did a little work explicating the various styles at work by designers. I find I notice them more now, though not as much as the interviewees do. I also have a little better sense of why I like this or that font. I haven’t switched to helvetica though. After watching the film, I almost feel that it is a dangerous tool, fit only for the hands of those capable of using it properly.

But I still don’t know what font I want to see when I’m typing something out.