Film Type Cast
posted by on March 14 at 10:53 AM
Gary Hustwit’s documentary HELVETICA ended its run at the Northwest Film Forum last night. At just 80 minutes, it’s still a bit long, but is nonetheless an interesting and occasionally amusing insight into the usage and history of the ubiquitous font.
In the film, 59-year-old graphic designer Paula Scher expresses her disdain for Helvetica, calling it the “typeface of the Vietnam War”, and now the typeface of the war on Iraq.
John Kerry’s fate was sealed four years ago when his campaign unveiled the Kerry/Edwards logo. Already perceived as too wimpy and too French, Kerry’s campaign simply reinforced this image with their choice of the weak and uninspired typeface, Georgia, timidly condensed to 90%.
Serifs and light italics do not evoke “A STRONGER AMERICA.” They are Dukakis in a tank.
Meanwhile the Bush/Cheney campaign marketed their two draft-dodgers as brave, strong and decisive by blanketing them in Helvetica Extra Black Condensed (CONDENSED!), paradoxically horizontally-scaled 150%.
Democrats take note, they will stop at nothing.
I rented the HELVETICA documentary, and had similar thoughts about the Obama logos.
His first version was Upper/Lower Case, a Serif Font (looked like Garamond), and had a softer touch. Later in the campaign, they switched to a much bolder, ALL UPPER CASE, Sans-Serif Font (especially on the CHANGE signage). Both logos were classy, but the newer design concept is as strong as the near-San-Serif font, All-Upper-Case MC CAIN logo.
Mmmmm... Garamond.
I like this, fashion and graphic design on slog.
Hoefler & Frere-Jones, the designers of Gotham (the font Obama is using) have an interesting post about it here, and about HRC and JMc's type choices.
It's ridiculous to use serif on a sign.
@4 yeah.
On the design for this campaign: Obama's design is brilliant. Hillary's is more the standard stuff. McCain's is all yellow, charcoal and black with military stars. Interesting.
The Bush/Cheney sticker is like hauling Helvetica off to Guantanamo and waterboarding the shit out of it. And as for the poor kerning, I say FLICK THEM.
Obama's typography is superb.
This is the best Slog post ever.
For those who can't make it and are NetFlix subscribers, this movie has been available via their free "streaming" service for a while now...
http://netflix.com/Movie/Helvetica/70076125
Where's the People's Font of Judea?
Ha ha ha. Oh, and @4, I agree.
To me, Bush will always be Comic Sans.
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