Helvetica came today. I preorded it a while ago and totally forgot about it. I told Jamie today that I bought a documentary on a typeface and she just about laughed at me, but then regained her composure and said she would, as the good wife she is, watch it with me. So, we sat down in the big chair in the living room and watched Helvetica with Ashley and Brinks on the couch opposite of us. Jamie really enjoyed it and it went above and beyond my expectations. I really loved it. It really was an inspiring film. I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this increasingly visual culture and may want to see where it comes from.
There is something about talking about typefaces, design, about the definition of this world of communication that we live in that really excites me. I love talking about it, exploring it and thinking about it philosophically. I think much of my design that I do is merely a quick and dirty use of a computer slapping together a few things I know about how stuff looks, with little thought and little heart. That makes a designer worse and worse everyday. I may get more efficient and learn how to run a business better, but the work typically becomes more and more meaningless to me and in turn, I belive, to the audience.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the different spheres of communication design that now exist, almost exclusively due to computers and the information age. It is one of the reasons that I was able to setup a website with sophisticatedly simple WordPress as the backend, even though I am no programmer. The tools are just there, they are everywhere. Everyone has used Photoshop, so in everyone’s mind they are a designer. Now, this does intrigue me, after all the reason I am designer is that I got the tools, professional design software, basically handed to me free of charge to learn. I dove right in and learned tons. That is the cool thing about technology. It empowers. The designer’s heart can be awakened by discovering the Adobe Creative Suite, or to much lesser degree some open source design apps (that are not up to par yet..give them 10 years).
There is something greater, something more ungraspable that computers do nothing for, except as mentioned in the film, make a person faster. I learned design on computers, but therein lies my weakness. Computers make the designer not. I mean, you can learn all the coolest tips and trips from every design/adobe software related podcast out there, but to learn how to see, how to experience, how to feel, is beyond a visual quickstart guide or video blog. I think in many ways we have a large entitlement complex in this now visually rich culture, that I don’t care how it looks or how quality it is, I did it because I can. Because I can is the mantra of the internet of computers (primarily the bloated trial-ware windows comptuers, who cram whatever they can in box). Because I can doesn’t understand white space. Because I can can’t say a message with a single sparse images. Because I can can’t find a different solution than a default drop shadow. Becuase I can breaks rules it didn’t know existed, because I didn’t care about them in the first place. Because I can lacks the constraint, boundaries and care that makes a design great.
Prehaps this is just post-modernism, or just my own fears that I may be come irrelevant in an age where everyone is a designer and photographers. I must feel like a designer who was on the fence between traditional handmade design and the new age of computer design and the Macintosh. But, I take heart. I have friends at Zolo who lept that divide, and still remain useful and successful, whose design was forged in the discipline and conceptual thoughtfulness that makes Because I can seem fairly frivolous to me.
Ok, let me back pedal a little. Because I can, can open the door to something new… Something uncomfortable and subversive usually does. But i can’t hurt to have some humlity to learn from the past masters. While they may philosophically be so different than you… you may be closer to them than you think. So, I recommend you watch and take in the richness of design, and stop for a moment to see the Helvetica around you…and that it isn’t just a font from a list of other items in a computer menu.
