I
have a favorite font.
It’s not like my favorite movie
or my favorite food, where I’d
need some time to think or debate
between two or three options. It is
my one, singular favorite font. When
I watch it appear across the screen, I
see the work that was put in designing
and redesigning its curves and edges.
I see the work I put in, as a designer,
when I use it. In my years of working
with it, I’ve learned so many funny
facts and anecdotes about
this font that I’ll never
forget.
I know it’s free on Mac but
not on Windows, because
it loads on my computer,
but it comes up missing on
my dad’s. When I helped
my father design his book,
we
stumbled
across
this
challenge.
I
know
the
spacing between the letters
is
uniform
because
it’s
different from many other
fonts. I know it was invented
in Switzerland in the 50s,
but
my
favorite
version
is a redesign from 1983. I
know it’s part of the neo-
grotesque style because I
heard someone say that once,
though I’m not sure what that
means. I remember watching
a
documentary
about
it,
which was just OK, but
I’m happy for the director,
because it got shown at the
Museum of Modern Art in
New York City. I know it’s
the font they use in the New
York subway system because
I found a book about it.
For a font, the extent of
scholarship on Helvetica is
astounding.
Helvetica
Neue
—
Helvetica Neue Bold to be
exact — makes me feel calm.
Newsrooms
and
design
projects can be stressful, but
ultimately Helvetica Neue
is as dependable as a song I
know all the words to. Years
ago, when I first saw it, I fell in love
with how clean it looked on the page,
and that was before design was a big
part of my life.
Helvetica opened my world to
modern editorial design. I remember
when I first saw it in the red and
white Supreme logo and a couple of
European magazines. I remember
how cleansing it felt when my paper
in high school switched to Helvetica
Neue from Futura, a slightly older,
more emotive font. Suddenly, all
the unnecessary, deco-thickness of
Futura was streamlined by the perfect
ratios in Helvetica. It became my
platonic ideal for what a San Serif font
should be.
I judged every other font I came
across against Helvetica. Recently,
I’ve even experimented with the light
version of the font because I like its
lanky structure. It looks like a baby
deer standing on two long, skinny
legs. Helvetica is convenient for me,
as a designer. It goes well with other
fonts because it’s so uncomplicated
and rational, and people like it for the
same reason.
I had discovered what everyone
already knew about Helvetica — it’s
good. No one hates Helvetica. It’s
not controversial. It’s a strong font.
Because there’s really nothing to
dislike, there are no wacky aspects like
the faux-handwriting on famously-
memed Comic Sans. It’s a perfect font
for the minimalist design trend going
on right now, and because of that, it’s
basic.
So, I guess I’m a basic font girl … if
there is such a thing. I picked one of the
most mainstream fonts in the world to
be my font of choice forever. I love the
same font that North Face, Energizer,
Post-it and Drake love. It’s similar to
liking pizza more than all other foods,
or watching The Notebook every day
because you really think it’s the best
movie out there.
Other designers would understand
that it’s popular and understand that
the angles and the thicknesses are
meticulous. They get that it’s famous
and can even respect that it looks
good, but they would be shocked —
floored — to know that I picked such
a basic font to be my favorite.
Every
day,
beautiful
fonts
are
designed and put up for sale through
links in Instagram bios and on
the Adobe social media platform,
Behance. A French design house
that I follow on social media just put
up a new one called Cako with two
different versions of R and K that each
have unique beveling. The different
versions of each letter are either
concave or convex, leaving which to
use up to the designer’s discretion.
This choice comes along with thick
serifs and differing line weights on
different parts of letters. The overall
effect is gorgeous; it’s a clean but busy
font that is staunchly modern but not
lacking in character.
Fonts, especially on social
media, are an exploding cottage
industry. An indie font found
on Instagram with a lot of
quirks that costs 80 euros to
download … that’s a cool favorite
of many millennials. Anyone
with the Adobe suite and the
talent can produce a font in
today’s world. Like many other
creative endeavors, it’s been
democratized so anyone with
an idea can sell work without a
label.
People
put
in
serious,
innovative work designing and
creating fonts. In fact, I think we
might be in a font renaissance.
Fonts skew the meaning of
letters before they’re even words
— a single letter can look stoic or
heartbroken depending on the
typeface. The process of mapping
out every angle and every curve
in each letter of the alphabet,
punctuation mark and number
is
painstaking.
With
people
putting
themselves
through
design hell to make new fonts, I
feel silly being so obsessed with
a font that’s over 60 years old.
Helvetica Neue was designed
to make me love it. The height
and width of letters throughout
the typeface is uniform, and
each letter has a little pillow
of space around it. It’s cute
in its technicality and in its
uniformity. The way the tail of
the “g” almost touches the little
bubble part and the way the dots
on “i” and “j” hover perfectly
in line with the rest of the letter are
soothing to me. It is designed to have
no message of its own — to be a blank
canvas for designers to put meaning
into with placement and sizing and
to give meaning by organizing it into
words and phrases. When I look at
Helvetica Neue, I see years of work
— my work. I see my editors and
colleagues, work I’m proud of and
work that I’m not.
My whole design career is there, in
this font.
Wednesday, January 16, 2019 // The Statement
7B
Wednesday, September 25, 2019 // The Statement
7B
BY KATE GLAD, STATEMENT DESIGNER
InDesign: My helvetica neue
ILLUSTRATION BY KATE GLAD