Helvetica the movie

I watched the film Helvetica last night. It is a documentary style film interviewing a selection of graphic and type designers to get their opinions on the typeface. The film explores the birth of the typeface and why it became so popular with the modernist style. The film also gives countless examples of helvetica in use and shows how we are surrounded daily by tweaks of the same typeface. It is without doubt that helvetica is over used but I can understand why. Its beauty is in its simplicity and ability to look fresh and clean in any situation.

Following on from my previous blog post designer Massimo Vignelli made a very interesting point:

"Life of a designer is a life of fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us visual disease is what we have around and what we try to do is cure it somehow, you know with design."

This is a great way to look at design as a profession, a constant struggle to solve the world's problems by making everything beautiful. It is a small minority of the world that is making this happen it is definitely one I want to be part of. I may not have a personal ethos that is so bold to say "I will change the world" but if I can make the world a better looking and more interesting place for a few people then I will deem my work successful.

A point raised by Rick Poynor was that today we are much more aware of graphical communication in the world around us, in our consumer choices such as the clothes we wear, what we eat and drink and where we shop. Our clothes and brands create our physical image but now everyone possesses a second self-representation online. Whether it be through myspace, facebook, twitter, a blog or a personal website we can all freely create content that represents our self online. To a certain extent you can customise your own online image, if you have the technical ability but there is definitely a lack of creative freedom and self expression when it comes to creating an online profile. How can you empower a user with the same ability to create a self image online as you can in reality? How can we do this while making the internet a better looking place to be. This is one of the topics I wish to explore during my masters course. I will go into detail in my next post.