Helvetica Tramp Stamps, Cookies & Baby Onesies: 9 Unexpected Uses For A Typeface

By Gendy Alimurung Wed., Jan. 12 2011 at 6:07 AM

Helvetica is the font--excuse me, typeface--that won't quit. We see it everywhere (remember Gary Hustwit's documentary film Helvetica?). Here, in order of ascending awesomeness, are nine excellent and hilarious takes on the typeface to rule all typefaces.

9. Metallica Helvetica

I'd like to see this one by Yann Serandour in actual tee shirt format. It's currently a wood etching. Says the artist, it is "The inversion of two radically opposed visual identities. Helvetica is a font created in 1957 by the Swiss graphic designer Max Miedinger (1910-1980) for the Haas Type Foundry in Basel. Metallica is an American heavy metal group formed in 1981 in Los Angeles."

It has a companion piece, with the word Metallica printed in Helvetica.

via Yann Serandour

8. Hollywoodvetica

A poster for Gary Hustwit's Helvetica documentary. I'm not sure what typeface the real Hollywood sign is cast in. Any of you design nerds know?

7. Sex, Drugs, Helvetica, Bold

This tee shirt by Collapse Design is also available in red.

6. You Are More Perfect Than Helvetica

Now that's love. Weird. Nerdy. But love. (From TheVoiceThatSaid's Flickr.)

5. Helveticookies

Beverly Hsu made these cookies with Helvetica-shaped cookie cutters also of her own making. Many layers of playful font geekiness in this one. Helvetica as a cookie-cutter typeface.

Tags:

gary hustwit, Gendy Alimurung, helvetica, typeface

We Recommend

Lindsay ML

When will people make Univers cookie cutters? I would jump on that bandwagon.

Lori Patton

LOVES!

Guest

wow...'unexpected' is an understatement

nvnhg

uyny

yhyhg

yhyhg

Tristanshout

That is amazing. However, isn't new research revealing that important info (the kind you need during an emergency, say) SHOULDN'T be in a serious typeface like Helvetica? But perhaps in something like Comic Sans?

Lindsay ML

No. To borrow the well written words of a peer: "If you read the article, the study does not conclude that the fonts are more *legible*, but that "unconventional" typefaces result in students understanding the text better, which means that since it's harder to read the text, more effort and focus is needed to get through it, resulting in people remembering the content more than if quickly browsing through a text set in a "normal" typeface.

However, with any such thing, there has to be a threshhold of when the benefits no longer outweight the problems. I have problems believing that someone will get better results using this idea in a real-world studying scenario, because at some point, struggling with the text will have taken more time than properly focusing while reading a text set in a "conventional" textface.

I can't imagine that one would have a better, or easier, experience by having to struggle through 800 pages of a law-school textbook set in papyrus... compared to reading the same text set in a more "conventional" typeface and just making sure to put the proper effort into the reading and synthesizing of the text and its meaning."

I'd add that typography research by those outside the typographic community is woefully dismal, and as with most research endeavors, one (small) study does not a completely objective fact-finding mission make.