Helvetica

HELVETICA

5 Key points I drew from watching and analysing the Helvetica film were that Helvetica is:

- All about negative space
Vignelli said it's the space between the black, the white that 'makes the music'. There's a clear emphasis that this font focuses on the spacing of letters and how they align as the sides approach straight lines.

- Socialist Font
Accesible to everyone and can be interpreted in different ways by context.
Lars Muller "As its available all over and invites dilettantes and amateurs to create their own type design."

- Rational
Legible, ordered and structured in such a way different government organisations can use it to appear clean as well as accessible to the public.

- Weapon
Used a lot as the typeface for those promoting the Vietnam war, this typeface can similarly be used in advertisement to persuade as it is the 'neutral font', leading you to believe this is the normality.

- Dull
David Carson and other designers will argue this 'neutral' font that symbolises globalisation has been overused to the point in becomes dull. Carson explains font should be "interesting exciting and emotional", he points out words written in Helvetica and explains how none of these words are expressed through the font "There's no sunshine in this!".


Logos using Helvetica from Iconic companies use the font in such a way it suits them, in context they're easily recognisable and the font appears versatile as a neutral font it can be applied in any way a designer sees fit.

The evian logo using colour and lowercase gives the brand an accessible and honest appearance, suited to the context of their product.
 The American Airlines also using Helvetica, gives the font a completely different feel using the contrasting colours representative of American flag colours, and the use of uppercase A's which unlike the Evian logo give the font a more authoritarian feel, the AA ironically sharing a logo with American Apparel which furthermore appears to suit the context of a clothes shop despite sharing the same format. The use of colour adds an identity to the American airlines logo.
The neutral font appears clean and the concept that Helvetica was created for a more global typeface suits the airline brand due to the nature of their product.

Looking at the rebrand of the American Airlines (the latter being the new logo), it's interesting to see how they've changed many factors yet kept with Helvetica, yet in many people's opinion including my own and Vignelli's (the original logo designer) they've gone a step backwards. To me the original logo was timeless and despite being designed in 1967, the use of font enables the design to still appear modern today. This font was predominantly used around the 70s and signified the corporate American refresh as modernism took over.The kerning of the new logo is looser and the font appears less crisp. They've also lost the identity encapsulated in the font through use of colour.
Vignelli commented:

"It has no sense of permanence. The American flag is great. I’m designing a logo now for a German company, and I’m using black, red, gold, and yellow. Why? Because national colors have a tremendous equity." 

The American apparel logo has far wider kurning whilst the original American Airlines had such little it appeared to be one word separated only by colour. The font is also bolder and comes across more playful rather than the thinner more formal airline logo. The bold tightly spaced American Apparel is suited to the brand.