Thursday, April 03, 2008

Helvetica


Finally got round to watching Gary Hustwit's amazing Helvetica documentary last night. It was great!

Any film featuring Wim Crouwel, Herman Zapf, Neville Brody and David Carson is OK with me! Did I mention I met David Carson and chatted about the amusing font Hobo? No?

The documentary reminded me a bit of a typographical version of Dogtown & Z-Boys.

Oh - Die Neue Haas Grotesk was the original name for Helvetica. The original was based on Akzidenz Grotesk, and was designed by Max Miedinger for the Haas Type Foundry in the 50s. Even those who are peeved by the overabundance of Helv these days can't deny it's a classic!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

We didnt talk to David Carson about Hobo - that was part of his main talk. Said it was the worst font ever. I saw a number plate the other day that had the letters set in it.

We talked to him about Room 237 and he asked if '237' was in words or numbers.

Your memory was never a strong point.

Pig Dog said...

Ha ha! Being even more specific, he urged us to just go with 237, and drop "room" altogether. Seemed like a reasonable idea, before bands like 911 and 5ive were around!

And the actual discussion about Hobo was referring to a contents page in Raygun (or maybe Transworld Skateboarding or Bikini) - he scrolled through the fonts on his Mac and picked the worst one. Zapf Chancery could've been just as bad, or Serpentine (the "bloke's font") - MacDaddy's favourite!

Pig Dog said...

Anyway Mr Joe D. Tee, remember when we saw David Quay in Covent Garden, but we weren't 100% sure if it was him so I shouted out "DAVID QUAY!" as loud as I could? Actually maybe I was with Rob Hall and Hoo-ha?

Did the same thing with GURU from Gang Starr - but this time shouted out "KEITH!".

Shouting at famous people is mint!

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