Two fonts walk into the bar, and the barman says “sorry lads, we don’t serve your type”.

22Nov07

Welcome to the world of a third year graphics student... 

Today was a busy one. To begin with I had a group crit, where we talked about each others work. It was interesting to see what others are working on and even in our small group of five, there were many different approaches. I have just started a typography brief where I am listing everything I do for a period of time, and presenting it somehow. A few weekends ago I went to the first Swnfest in Cardiff, saw lots of great bands and generally had a wild weekend break from university. I’m trying to make a piece that commemorates this as Cardiff’s first festival and also reminds me that there is life outside of dissertations and projects. So far, it’s a bit like a railway timetable and incredibly dull to look at even by railway standards, so this week I’m going to be adding much more information to it to make it a lot more dense. 

What font is this wonderful piece of information graphic art using? Helvetica. I’m still not sure what my opinion is on this one. I saw the documentary on the Beeb the other week, and I still just don’t know. I think I like it because sometimes it can look great and has so many uses, some of which are documented in Lars Müller’s book on the subject. Equally, helvetica can look dull, tired and very boring because it is used for so many things. A lot depends on the treatment of it and the context though; bad design is still going to be bad no matter what typeface you use. I think that I’ll be sticking with it for this project because I have not used it for a while in my design work, I think just because it is so commonly used and maybe it’s a phase that designers go through “oh no, not helvetica. Mere mortals use that font every day, that’s not for us.” Well, I’ll see how it goes and hopefully this project will work out.


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