Helvetica (2007)

Erik Spiekermann: Self

Quotes 

• Erik Spiekermann : It's air, you know. It's just there. There's no choice. You have to breathe, so you have to use Helvetica.

• Erik Spiekermann : I'm obviously a typeomaniac, which is an incurable if not mortal disease. I can't explain it. I just love, I just like looking at type. I just get a total kick out of it: they are my friends. Other people look at bottles of wine or whatever, or, you know, girls' bottoms. I get kicks out of looking at type. It's a little worrying, I admit, but it's a very nerdish thing to do.

• Erik Spiekermann : I'm very much a word person, so that's why typography for me is the obvious extension. It just makes my words visible.

• Erik Spiekermann : I mean, everyone puts their history into their work.

• [first lines] 

  Rick Poynor : Type is saying things to us all the time. Typefaces express a mood, an atmosphere. They give words a certain coloring.

  Michael Bierut : Everywhere you look you see typefaces. But there's one you probably see more than any other one, and that's Helvetica. You know, there it is, and it seems to come from no where. You know, it seems like air? It seems like gravity?

  Jonathan Hoefler : And it's hard to evaluate it. It's like being asked what you think about off-white paint. It's just... it's just there. And it's hard to get your head around, it's that big.

  Erik Spiekermann : Most people who use Helvetica, use it because it's ubiquitous. It's like going to McDonald's instead of thinking about food. Because it's there, it's on every street corner, so let's eat crap because it's on the corner.

  Michael C. Place : For me Helvetica is just this beautiful, timeless thing. And certain things shouldn't be messed with, you know?

  Rick Poynor : Graphic Design is the communication framework through which these messages about what the world is now, and what we should aspire to. It's the way they reach us. The designer has an enormous responsibility. Those are the people, you know, putting their wires into our heads.

• Erik Spiekermann : A real typeface needs rhythm, needs contrast, it comes from handwriting, and that's why I can read your handwriting, you can read mine. And I'm sure our handwriting is miles away from Helvetica or anything that would be considered legible, but we can read it, because there's a rhythm to it, there's a contrast to it. Helvetica hasn't got *any* of that.

  Interviewer : Why, fifty years later, is it still so popular?

  Erik Spiekermann : [sighs]  Why is... bad taste ubiquitous?