Erik Spiekermann on Helvetica
电影製作人Gary Hustwit在Covid-19這段特殊時期免費向大众放出了他的作品。本周是关於傳奇無衬綫字體Helvetica的紀錄片。其中有一段Erik Spiekermann的採訪（約在影片36:12）很有意思（手動加粗）：
Hustwit: Why 50 years later is it still so popular?
Spiekermann: (sighs) I don’t know. Why is bad taste ubiquitous? No, it’s actually, Helvetica was a good typeface at the time. It really answered a demand. But now it’s become one of those defaults that, partly because of the proliferation of the computer, which is now 20 years, the PC, I mean, it was the default on the Apple Macintosh and then it became the default on Windows, which copied everything that Apple did, as you know, interface and everything else, and then they did the clone version, Arial, which is worse than Helvetica but fills the same purpose I think.
Now, it’s probably, it’s never gonna go away because it is ubiquitous. It’s a default. It’s air, you know? It’s just there. There’s no choice. You have to breath, so you have to use Helvetica.
It brings a style with it. Every typeface does. It’s like a person. If you are slightly heavy in the middle, you’re not gonna walk around in tight T-shirts. You’d look an idiot. And Helvetica is heavy in the middle, so it needs certain space around it. It needs a lot of white space. It needs very carefully to be looked at the weight gradations. It needs a lot of space sideways also. Then it’s very legible, but very small and very tightly done and very lightly, as modern designers do. It’s a nightmare. I wouldn’t say this if I hadn’t tried it. Because all the letters, it’s the whole Swiss ideology. The guy who designed it tried to make all the letters look the same. Hello? You know, that’s called an army. That’s not people. That’s people having the same fucking helmet on. Doesn’t further individualism. The aim with type design always is to make it individual enough so that it’s interesting, but of course 95% of any alphabet has to look like the other alphabet otherwise you wouldn’t be able to read it.
對Macintosh歷史稍有瞭解的朋友都知道喬布斯對微軟品味的鄙視，Windows對Macintosh交互界面（interface）的抄襲（借鑑）當然是其原因之一。
Erik Spiekermann說到很有意思的一點是Helvetica沒有個性（individualism）。我自己最早使用mac時，對Helvetica縂有種dehumanized（被剔除人性）的感覚。對比sans serif的人文主義代表Gill Sans或Avenir Next，我們便可以很直觀地感受其近乎冷酷無情的中性。
影片的後半段更多在講述人們如何看待Helvetica的過度使用，如何試圖走出現代主義的乏味；如何走入grunge和後現代，又是如何用一套新的準則回歸傳統。
我們从來就沒有走入現代，這就是为什麼我們的精神仍迫切地需要一次modernization。
延伸閱讀：
- Helvetica的維基百科頁面
- Type Is Beautiful創始人Rex最早發表的一篇关於Helvetica和Arial的比較
- 字谈字畅 070：后 Helvetica 时代
- 知乎問答：Helvetica 比 Arial 好看吗？为什么？