Notes on Helvetica

Helvetica is what people pick when they want to seem like they didn’t pick anything. That’s its great trick, and also the source of its critics.

The argument against it is that it has no point of view — that it’s the typographic equivalent of beige paint. The argument for it is exactly the same. A typeface that gets out of the way is doing a difficult job well.

What Helvetica actually does

Set a paragraph in Helvetica and the words rise to the top of your attention. Set the same paragraph in something more characterful — a slab serif, a humanist sans, anything with mannerisms — and the typeface becomes an interlocutor. Sometimes you want that. Often you don’t.

For essays, mostly you don’t.

The cost

The cost of using Helvetica is that you forfeit any chance of the typography itself being the thing people remember. The compensation is that whatever you wrote has a slightly better chance of being remembered instead.