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The film features interviews with various font and graphic designers (including the guy who worked on Verdana with Microsoft, Matthew Carter), talking about the history and usage of Helvetica. It was intended to be a neutral font with no intrinsic meaning: a clean, legible and "rational" typeface that could be used in a wide variety of signage. (Although not mentioned in the film, the British "Transport" font - used since the 1960s on all UK roadsigns - was also created in 1957 and shares similar design aims of legibility.)
Some people love Helvetica and some hate it, often for the same reasons. For some it's neutral, a blank canvas onto which a designer can impose his or her vision; for others it's a safe, lazy choice that indicates a lack of imagination and creativity; for others still it's a thing of beauty, the "perfect font". Some even see it as oppressive, almost fascist - the font for faceless corporations and government organisatons - and for them using it is less a design decision and more a political statement (I find that a bit hard to take seriously).
The use of Helvetica really took off in the 1960s, and it was interesting to compare (for example) the adverts for Coca-Cola in the 50s with those in the 60s. One of the commentators in the film observes that the rise of the personal computer - and the use of Helvetica as default in so many publishing packages - is another factor in the continuing ubitiquity of the typeface. Interestingly, the web wasn't really mentioned at all, although arguably that's where a lot of people come into contact with typography these days.
Personally I like how Helvetica looks, but I do think that it's also a bit overused sometimes. I believe that the choice of font can contribute to creating a particular mood about the text - but then, I also feel that the shape of words and paragraphs, and how they look on the page, also creates an impression aside from the actual content. So I enjoyed hearing one interviewee wax lyrical about the letterforms, the shapes "inside" and "between" the letters, and how even the spacing between the letters can change the character of the typeface.
Kyle thinks it's hilarious that I watched an entire film about a font. However if you're into fonts then you might like to try the What Font Are You? game from the PBS website (I came out as "Helvetica", which is "classic", "reliable" but also "slightly boring" - not sure if that's a good thing or not). I saw from the website that the director's next film is "Objectified" and is about industrial design of everyday objects (toothbrushes, iPhones etc). I've read a couple of books like "The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman, and "Small Things Considered" by Henry Petroski and this sounds like it might cover similar ground, so it could be interesting too.
Helvetica film website
[v]ocabulary blog posting about the soundtrack which includes the track listing
It's only a few days now until Christmas and everyone seems to be wishing us "Happy Holidays!", which to me has always felt like one of those quintessentially American turns of phrase - it's hard to imagine someone in the UK saying it. For Britons it's "Merry Christmas!" all the way. But "Happy Holidays" does reflect some of the multicultural flavour of the US, and the fact that Christmas isn't the only December holiday (religous or otherwise).
For example, if you go into a card shop looking for a Christmas card you will most likely also see a very nice selection of "Happy Hanukka!" cards, since the Jewish festival of Hanukka falls in December (it started on the 22nd this year). Then on the 26th December the week-long African American holiday called Kawanzaa begins. I'd never heard of Kawanzaa until I saw a poster for it in Princeton, but apparently it has been celebrated here as an "alternative" holiday to Christmas since it was instituted in 1966.
(At the same time I'd note that there are some British traditions that Americans don't share, for example they don't seem to have Boxing Day or Christmas crackers.)
Historically the Winter Solstice has been a significant date for many cultures and has been marked by various feasts and festivals through the ages. So I suppose the phrase "Happy Holidays!" is a good way to wish someone well in the spirit of the season, without reference to a particular religion or belief system. It also seems quite appropriate for people celebrating a form of "commercialised Christmas", which Kyle and I like to refer to as "Giftmas", and which retains the traditions of tree-decoration, gift-giving, over-consumption and angst whilst dispensing with just about all religious elements.
Anyway, in spite of how near we are to the 25th, I'm still waiting for Kyle to finish working on Christmas Eve before I can really feel like Christmas is here. And it's a little odd not to be spending Christmas with my folks this year, for the first time ever - but I'm still thinking of them and wishing them well. Happy Holidays everyone, wherever you are!
Kyle and I went to the local Stop and Shop supermarket last night for our weekly shop, and I finally remembered to take my camera to get some pictures of the "International Foods" aisle there. (I felt a little concerned that someone might be upset that I was taking pictures of the shelves, but Kyle assured me that it would be okay as long as I wasn't noting down the prices.)
So what? you might be thinking. What has always fascinated me about this particular section of the store (aside from a sign indicating the sale of "international beans") is that it includes a selection of "British" items such as jam, PG Tips tea, and various digestive biscuits, crackers and chocolate products (click on the image to see more detail):A lot of brands really are international, including Tetley teabags, which are actually in the main tea-and-coffee section. I'd always believed that Tetley was some parochial Yorkshire-based firm after seeing all their 1980's TV adverts, but it turns out that they're actually an Indian-owned multinational company which is also the second largest tea company in the US. Twix and KitKats are also available here.
But it's interesting to me that in a world of global brands like Starbucks and Macdonalds, familiar things such as Bounty bars and PG Tips tea can still be "foreign foods" to people here. It makes them seem more special than they would be on supermarket shelves back home. I wouldn't try to make a case that Jacobs crackers and Lion bars are somehow significant symbols of British identity, but seeing them is a pleasant reminder of back home every time we go shopping - as if there is a supermarket shelf in the Stop and Shop that's selling a little taste of England!
I've been hanging out in some of the coffee shops in Princeton, such as Starbucks, Chez Alice and Small World Coffee, as a change from the University cafes. They're good places to sit and drink tea or coffee while reading, playing with a laptop, or just pondering existence (yes, it can be a tough life sometimes).
I'm not enough of a connoisseur to really comment on the coffee, but I'm intrigued by the fact that each place has its own atmosphere and its own rhythms. For example, Chez Alice is also a cake shop, so there are outrageous-looking wedding cakes in the windows as well as more modest ones that you can have with a drink. It seems to attract people of all ages who are taking time out from shopping or who are meeting up with friends, so while there's some background chatter it's a nice place to sit and read for a while.
In contrast, Small World Coffee seems to be a much busier place. In fact, I'd almost describe it as raucous: there's plenty of background music competing with what feels like dozens of simulataneous conversations, and people are constantly coming and going (including a share of "laptop campers" - people who park themselves for a few hours at a table and tap away on their laptops while sipping on their drink of choice - sometimes I'm one too).
They seem serious about their beverages here too: I had a latte there that came in a glass with no handle, and yesterday my tea order came in an elaborate set of lab-like glassware along with a cup and saucer.
Starbucks is also friendly to laptop campers and doesn't seem to mind people plugging their computers into the wall sockets, but it's a bit more subdued than Small World Coffee. I'll have to admit that I'd always harboured a somewhat fuzzy and rather lazy prejudice against Starbucks, as a "Macdonalds for coffee drinkers" and for that whole "tall, grande, venti" nonsense (though this never extended as far as actually boycotting their products). But recently my attitude towards them has softened - for example, at every one of the Starbucks where we've asked for tap water, the staff have always provided it to us for free without any argument (and in a fancy Starbucks-branded plastic cup complete with lid and straw, no less).
Of course they also vary depending on the time of day, with the ebb and flow of customers going about their business, and I try to avoid what I think will be the busiest times. Maybe if you're really into your coffee then you might have a different take these places, but I like the fact that they're all different and that there's something to suit whatever mood you happen to be in.
Now, is it time for another double-expresso-mocha-choco-latte?
She pretty much disappeared from the public eye after the 1950s, while at the same time the popularity of her pictures has soared. This has had the curious effect of freezing her image in time, so even though she died at the age of 85, she still remains the iconic young and playfully seductive pin-up. I think that part of her appeal is summed up in the quote from a retrospective article from Reuters: "Bettie Page embodied the stereotypical wholesomeness of the Fifties and the hidden sexuality straining beneath the surface."
The news of her passing can be read in lots of different places (including the BBC, where I took the picture from), however I think that one of the fullest tributes is the obituary at http://www.bettiepage.com/ - well worth reading if you're interested in knowing more about the life and times of "the notorious Bettie Page".
It seems really strange to me - back in England you just don't suddenly get spring-like weather in the middle of winter. Nobody else seems particularly perturbed - apparently it's due to southerly winds blowing (relatively) warm air up from the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe they're just enjoying while it lasts, since it's already getting colder again this evening.
In the meantime I thought that I would take advantage of the rain to get some pictures of things reflected in puddles, loosely inspired by M.C. Escher's lithograph "Three Worlds". My photos weren't ever going to be a patch on Escher's original, but it was an interesting exercise and provided an excuse to stop and look at some familiar things in a slightly different way.
The forecast for tomorrow and the rest of the week is more rain, perhaps even snow, which sounds more like winter to me. Perhaps I'm just odd but personally I prefer the colder weather. This warm stuff just doesn't seem quite right in December - and certainly not like it's nearly Christmas!
As someone who used to be an avid buyer of vinyl this is a slice of history. Most of my music collection pre-1997 consists of 33 and 45 rpm records (these days it's almost exclsuively cds and downloads), and I've always felt a lot of affection for vinyl discs. Admittedly vinyl is increasingly anarchronistic these days, but I still enjoy picking out some long-unheard record and giving it a spin on my turntable.
A lot of it has to be pure nostalgia on my part. Viewed at a purely practical level, as simple containers for music cds are infinitely more convenient. And while I've heard the arguments that analogue is far richer than digital, the sad fact is most often neither my record player nor the discs themselves are of sufficient quality to match the clean sound that comes as standard with cds.
But it made me think that maybe sometimes there's more to listening to music than just hearing the sounds. Taking a record out of its sleeve, putting it on the turntable and dropping the needle takes a little more time and effort than simply popping a cd into a machine and pressing play, and I only tend to do it nowadays if I feel I have a bit of time to stop and listen. There's also a more direct physical engagement with the process. I'm not saying that it's better experience, just different, and that sometimes it's good to stop and listen to music rather than simply treating it like a background soundtrack to life.
Anyway, back to these 78 rpm records. They feature various artists that I'd never heard of before who turned out to be big names in the 1950s, such as Fran Warren and Claude Thornhill. Physically the discs remind me of the 10" EPs that I own, but the most noticeable difference is how heavy and substantial the 78s are in comparison.
Since we don't have any way to play these records, we don't know what condition they're in. But hopefully they'll still sound good and will end up with someone who loves hearing music on old vinyl discs and has the time to enjoy them. For me, it's just been great to have a chance to see a little bit of recording history up close and personal.
Bzzt! I keep getting zapped at home by static electricity discharge, some days so frequently that I feel like I'm taking part in some sort of Pavlovian experiment. I get charged up with static while shuffling around the house and then get a small shock when I touch something metallic (e.g. light switchplate screws, washing machine/tumble dryer, metal blinds, girlfriend and occasionally even my laptop). Sometimes there's even a visible spark and an audible crackle.
I think that understanding something is the first step in addressing it, so yesterday morning I decided to do some research. Initial results suggest that the static buildup only happens to when I wear socks and/or slippers, and only when I'm upstairs (which has different carpeting to the downstairs). Although my fleece crackles with static when I take it off it doesn't seem to be a factor in this case, so it looks like the buildup is principally due to the interaction between the upstairs carpet and what I'm wearing on my feet.
Looking on the web I read that the accumulation of static charges by clothing or footwear is most likely to happen in dry atmospheres such as heated houses in winter. Humidification and ionization of the air might help but seem a bit impractical in this case - the suggestion of wearing cotton or linen rather than wool, silk or synthetic materials seems more realistic. Or I could walk around barefoot, however this has its own problems in the winter.
I suppose that the alternative to prevention is mitigation. One suggestion was to turn off light switches with your knuckles to minimise the pain of any discharge (I try to present the flat of my hand at the moment) or else touching the metal surface with a key or other metallic object so that any spark doesn't directly come from your skin (I hadn't thought of that before).
But I think that I'd rather find a way to stop it altogether, before I train myself to instinctively avoid touching all the things listed above (especially the girlfriend).
Kyle and I came back almost a week ago from our most excellent two week holiday to Hawaii, and as I predicted pretty much all the trees are bare now. New Jersey is nice but so much colder than the islands (even though it's winter both here and there), and since the time difference is the same as that between New Jersey and the UK, I've also been experiencing a degree of jetlag (part of the reason why I'm blogging in the middle of the night).
When we first got back I had this idea that I would get all my photos uploaded to Flickr and then write a big blog posting describing my most favourite parts of our trip. In a way this "review" part is my way of finishing my holiday. But sorting the pictures out has turned out to be a much bigger job than I'd thought (I don't know why, since it's always taken me forever after every other trip) and didn't want to post the summary of the trip until I'd done that, and meanwhile there are other things I wanted to write about that are happening now.
Basically I've been suffering from blog constipation. I suppose I have this dumb idea that I have to do everything in "proper order", which in this case means posting stuff in strict chronological order. And for some reason today was particularly demoralising and I was beginning to feel really fed up with the whole process (added to that, I got kicked out of my lane partway through swimming this evening, to make way for a class - gah!).
Then this evening Kyle and I watched "The Daily Show", which had Arianna Huffington on as she's promoting a book about blogging. (She's the editor of a political blog called the Huffington Post, which I've never read.) Aside from being good fun to watch, she suggested that blogging can be about just writing what you think now, without overanalysing, and think that's what I needed to hear. Also I've been thinking about a Hawaiian phrase that I've been turning over in my mind for the last few days: "Ma ka hana ka `ike" - literally, "in the work, the knowing", but meaning "one learns by doing. Participate!".
So: I will finish sorting my Hawaii photos and I will write a bit about the trip. But I'll try not to let that get in the way of writing about other stuff in the meantime (I guess that's some kind of lame epiphany).
Ok, and now I'm off back to bed. Sweet dreams!
