Helvetica became a giant among fonts. Even today, when new fonts are as common and disposable as tissues, the eminently readable Helvetica remains a typographical stalwart.
“Types We Can Make,’’ an exhibition of recently developed fonts, stands on Helvetica’s unfussy shoulders. The fonts on view in the MIT Museum’s Compton Gallery, by Swiss designers affiliated with the University of Art and Design of Lausanne, Switzerland (ECAL), are not all utilitarian sans-serif types. Some are frilly. Some are positively wacky. But they all lean into aesthetics typical of Swiss design as exemplified by Helvetica (the Latin word for “Swiss’’): exacting and verging on mathematical. White space plays as pivotal a role as curves, stems, and serifs. And, although forward-looking, the Swiss designers are always mindful of tradition.
While the content of “Types We Can Make’’ is fascinating, the exhibition design leaves something to be desired — it’s a show that makes a better book, if you opt to purchase the catalog instead. Fonts are displayed on corrugated cardboard sandwich boards a shade above waist height, better suited to a child’s viewing than an adult’s. Each has a little clip-on text that names its maker and describes its origin. Scattered amid all those alphabets are movie posters, magazine covers, ads, and corporate logos in which the fonts are used. There’s an informative video about type design, but the show is a bit of an insider’s guide. For those who are not type geeks, more basic education would come in handy: a hands-on computer type-design program, say, and a chart contrasting similar fonts.
I’m a typographical neophyte, so to me one font looks a lot like the next. But if you explain why Replica is different from Theinhardt Grotesk, then I’ll develop a discerning eye. They’re both seamless sans-serif fonts. Replica, designed by Dimitri Bruni and Manuel Krebs, is a grid-based font, accompanying text tells us, and the bevels at the end of the stems reveal the grid’s structure. A helpful graphic has characters playing over a grid, and you see how the tip of a “y’’ forms a right angle, drawing the angled line out into an arrow.
