Helvetica
Using upper case in your sentences is good practice
I do not wish to talk about my loathing of all CAPP words or using italics in sentences in design. I would like to talk about my love of Helvetica and the way it was used in the New York underground. The New York stations are now designated with single letters or numbers. The signage uses a version of Aksidenz Grotesk, a precursor to Helvetica. The signage was easy to read and like Helvetica is refined, clean and simple…..and yes it does follow the Swiss method of the grid and the way one can place words and letters in that space. Power to the font that has been so over used in the last 20 years. I love sans serif. Who wants to see wiggly bits on the end of letters.
Lars Mueller published a book around Helvetica. I have seen three films about Helvetica…what other font has received this kind of devotion? Has anyone made a film about Times?
As I am no longer involved in the creative there were a few moments of maybe I should be back in the game to save the day. A website came to my attention which was riddled with lower case content. The all-lower case temptation of thinking you are being creative is wrong. Proper grammer was invented for a reason and when one is reading strings of sentences in lower case one will begin to think that the communication has been developed by a child. Is this culturally specific? The Europeans and Americans were interested in this style for only a few years.
or is it a fad.
PowerPoint pet hate
Another typographic disaster is to use 32 pt titles in PowerPoint. It is bad enough that you are using PowerPoint as your only form of communication but must you have a title that big.
Think twice; where on the page or slide are you going to store those letters or images. Which reminds me, I need to look at the design of my blog.
