For part of our graphic design and illustration workshop, we were asked to watch a documentary on the font Helvetica then write a reflection on what we thought of it.

Despite not having a whole lot of experience or knowledge of typography, I found the documentary quite interesting. It was interesting to here one of the men in the documentary describe typography as really being white, not even black, that it is the spaces between the black that makes it. Helvetica was created in Switzerland by Max Miedinger with input from Eduard Hoffmann in 1957 in a time with a need for rational type faces that could be applied to everything. A neutral font that could be given any kind of expression that is needed in that moment.

I hadn’t realised how much work goes into creating a typeface or that you can work out the DNA of all the letters by first creating the h, o and p as the three each represent how the straight lines, the curves and the combination of straight lines and curves will look overall for that typeface. I also found interesting that Helvetica was initially named Neue Haas Grotesk but was renamed to Helvetica to present it as a more neutral typeface that was understood and appealing to the western part of the world, mainly America.

In conclusion, I found the documentary pretty interesting and learnt more than expected about typography and how new typefaces are made.