Modernist designers were constantly making changes to typeface in search of the perfect font. A small Swiss typesetting firm designed Helvetica to be clean. Helvetica was exactly what the modernists were looking for. They felt it had the perfect balance between positive and negative space. Even the space between letters was perfect for comprehension with minimal effort. Helvetica was functionally invisible as a typeface.
The choice of font is extremely important to anyone trying to convey a message visually. Different fonts convey different messages, even if we don’t consciously realize it. Helvetica benefits from being message neutral. Unlike single purpose typefaces (I’m looking at you comic sans), Helvetica can be used in any number of ways; it is open to interpretation. Designers loved that Helvetica was as at home on a utility truck as it was on a corporate advertisement. Helvetica became the typeface of modern life.
Post modernist designers rebelled against Helvetica. They claimed the type was too clean and sterile, a relic of a past obsessed with cleanliness and simplicity of form. Post modernists wanted typography with “personality.” Post modern design tries to get away from the clean design of modernism and bring “vitality” back to the work. They feel typography can tell you something instantly about the process of design and that using one typeface for an entire project does not yield an interesting body of work over time. However, modernists counter that post modernists can be like “chickens with their heads cut off.” There is no fluidity or continuity to their work. They are less about being for something than against something. They are against modernism and Helvetica.
I come down firmly on the side of the modernists. Modernist design is classic and timeless. It looks as fresh today as it did fifty years ago. There is a reason that post modernist design is also called “grunge.” Much like grunge, post modernist typography is very much of its time. It may have seemed artistic and revolutionary in the eighties and nineties, but now it just looks dated.
