I saw the screening of the documentary Helvetica in Nashville, TN as part of the community screenings. It was sponsored by the Davidson County Downtown Library, Nashville Public Television (NPT), the Independent Television Service (ITVS), and American Advertising Federation Nashville. A panel discussion followed. It was interesting to see the polarized emotions on either side of the love/hate relationship with the Helvetica typeface both on film and in the audience. My personal thanks to the director, Gary Hustwit, for creating such an interesting film. I will use it in my classroom.
I particularly found it interesting that the majority of the designers interviewed were from the print industry and were mostly illustrators in the sense that they used type to emote. The other interviewees were primarily type designers. While I found it very entertaining and informative to understand the “why” of the type, the fact that it was focused on print delivery gave the film a particular skew and caused the discussion to toggle between the issues of utility and expression – which after all is the main crux of the debate. So is it really a debate about the purpose of design?
Design is far more than visual. There is sound design, architectural design, mechanical design, curriculum or instructional design. All of these disciplines use the word design. So design is far more than visual. My undergraduate is in Mechanical Drafting and Design. My graduate degree is in eLearning Design. Both my undergraduate and graduate work gave me strong fundamentals in design – which I summarize to be creating a system with a particular objective while understanding the various forces that will impact that system. With that broad definition of the word design comes inherent the principle of utility. They touched upon it in the film, but the director chose to focus more attention on the emotive principle – i.e. Visual Design’s mission to elicit emotions.
I would have liked to see the director address the importance of the advantages of using Helvetica in the design and delivery of information. True, all messages conveyed visually are information – whether through print or screen. However, maybe it has to do with the quantity of information. As a designer of online training, I frequently need to design a product which conveys a large amount of information. A principle that influences my design decisions is the principle of Cognitive Load Theory1. My objective is to maximize the learning taking place – not the emotional impact of the font. I’m not saying that keeping it interesting is not important, just that it is not the primary objective. The principle of “information chunking” is used to maximize the effectiveness of the lesson. Basically this means the information is delivered in digestible amounts. It all has to do with how much information the brain can absorb at one time.
The demand on energy can be regulated easier if the consumer does not have to struggle to make out the characters on the screen. More energy expended in the acquisition of the content, is energy not utilized in the deciphering of the message. That’s a good thing. You don’t want to waste your energy trying the read the display, you want to walk away from the screen having understood the concept. From a display, or illustration, point of view, Helvetica may be boring. From an ease of use point, i.e. utility point of view, it works beautifully and therefore is good design and has a place in every designer’s toolbox.
References
- Cognitive Load Theory. Wikipedia. Pay attention to the definition as it applies to short term memory and information chunking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_load