To coincide with our bipolar new Helvetica notebook — and to celebrate the wonderful Helvetica film we're involved with — we're holding a contest. Tell us why you love or hate Helvetica (the typeface). Make it an ode, a rant, a paean, a screed, a whatever. Make it up to 200 words long. E-mail your entry to ideas at veer dot com.Entrants with the best "love" and "hate" entries win their choice of limited-edition Helvetica film posters, plus two Helvetica notebooks and a Veer T-shirt. Five runners-up will win Helvetica notebooks. So get ranting or raving. We'll close the entries on May 7th.
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I want that poster!!!
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Helvetica calms me.
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I lovehate helvetica
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I always Hated Helvetica. Now I'm simply outing it out with more Veerve!
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Sorry Arial, you're just a cheap copy...
(What the Hel**tica are u talking 'bout ?!)
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I always love a good contest. Now, where's my quill and scroll.
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I love Helvetica. For me, Helvetica will always evoke feelings of nostalgia. In grammar school, I recall learning to write the letters of the alphabet by tracing its well proportioned form. The lovely, well traveled spine of the letter S, generous aperture of the eye in the letter E. To this day, spotting Helvetica often conjures the phantom smell of fresh crayons and graphite. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts.
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Grade 1 chalkboard. Hours of penmanship practice. Too-perfect formation. Ughhh. Now can I rant about Times New Roman?
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Additional to previous post (thought-provoking contest). Helvetica says "I have no imagination, I will just write the way I was taught .... and I colour that way too - I always stay inside the lines". Helvetica support groups should urge at least occasional forays into the realm of more creative fonts!
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helvetica is a chameleon typeface and the end result you get is directly proportional to the effort you put in with it.
it can be cool and sexy, hard edged and fashionable, dull and boring, Swiss and cold - whatever.
it's the typeface you always dismiss first - always going for the sexier, more current by default. And yet it is endlessly versatile. Every now and then you see a piece of typography with Helvetica that is simple, clean and is just perfect and it renews your interest in it.
Currently Frutiger is the new Helvetica for me - but I have had these lapses of fidelity but always return to the Swiss mistress.
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I like Helvetica and I rather resent the way that Arial has taken over. The great thing about Helvetica is that when used wisely, it always seems, in retrospect, to be the only possible font for that application. And of course, there are times when it might be better to find something else. For example:
A creative young woman called Monica
Was designing a book of erotica
But the book didn’t sell,
At least not too well,
For she'd insisted on using Helvetica
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Love Helvetica. Because love is simple.
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I LOVE HELVETICA because "Akzidenz Grotesk" doesn't go over well at lunch-time client presentations.
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Helvetica is a trusty little font. Always there when you need it. Never lets you down. Wish we could say that about more things in life.
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I have a LOVE/HATE relationship with helvetica. I love the proportions of the counters to the ascenders and descenders, i love the counter in the l/c "a," I love a lot of things about it, but mostly, I love the simple beauty of the typeface. It also reminds me of the color (or lack of color) white. I really only hate helvetica because I am constantly using it for everything I do at work-whether I want to or not! Ya, so it does look good everytime, but who is to say that avant garde wouldn't work just as well. It is always a LOVE/HATE thing with me.
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I love helvetica because the rush line at Helvetica was sold out! I love helvetica because I've always hated Comic Sans!
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Helvetica, you truly are the Kate Moss of fonts; ultra-thin, misunderstood and plastered over the daily tabloids. But don’t worry Helvetica, the grainy photos I have of you on my camera phone, up to your *e* in blow and marrying Pete Doherty in a secret beach ceremony are safe and secure. And even if they weren’t, you’d bounce back. One month they hate you, the next month their fawning at your feet.
The thing is Helvetica, you’re rubber. Whatever they say bounces off you and sticks to the daily tabloids in your ultra-thin, misunderstood strokes.
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Helvetica love/hate contest
Dear veer,
I chose to make an image instead of typing allot of text for you’re contest on the Helvetica love/hate contest, my English isn’t that good so I tought I’d spare you all of my spelling errors also that way
The way i see it is that Helvetica is kind of a drug/ medication for every typographical headache ..people whom are strugelin on finding the wright font to use for there project often don’t really spend allot of time in actually searching for a good font they just use a font they think works for just about anything ’Helvetica’ were in my opinion Helvetica is nice when you use it in big corps but the Helvetica font is just a total disaster when you use it in say a 10 -12 pt .
Anyway, what I chose to make was to illustrate Helvetica as a medicine, ’Helvetica instant’ that way I’m kind of making fun with the fact that people whom don’t know what font to use should just take a Helvetica pill and all you’re worries are gone, atleast that’s how allot of graphic designers think “we don’t know what font to use ..oh well lets use Helvetica” so the medicine “Helvetica” is my way of sarcasm on the way allot of designers think and on the way the font has almost become commercialized.
I had allot of fun making this the entire medicine box was modeled and textured in 3D, if you read the small letters on the box it says ’contains 20 mg of love , 26 mg of creativity , 30 mg of max miedinger etc
Here’s a link to the images (copy paste link into you’re browser)
Some screenshots of the making of
http://users.telenet.be/productions_image/ss1.jpg
And here's the actual design:
http://users.telenet.be/productions_image/helvetica-instant.jpg
Omar
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.style1 {font-family: Helvetica, Helvetica, Helvetica;}
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I say it with the words of Andy Bell & Vince Clarke:
I love to hate you, i hate to love you.
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You can't use Helvetica to write "love" and you can't use Helvetica even to write "hate", because it is too neutral.
Maybe that is why people love it and hate it at the same time.
But don't listen to me if you don't want to. I'm just a creative who never used Helvetica, because I love and I hate.
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HeLOVEtica
HELLvetica
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i love and hate helvetica at the same time,
i love helvetica because you know you'll
never screw up with helvetica,
i hate helvetica for the same reason.
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hi guys
i was just wondering, when will the winners of the helvetica love/hate contest be announced?
cheers
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We'll announce them this week - we had a big load of entries at the end!
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We love Helvetica. Really.
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