Above: Joanne Chew’s project played off the supposed neutrality of Helvetica by injecting it into our national political discussion. Splitting the typeface vertically, she produced “Helvetica Left Wing” and “Helvetica Right Wing” and set comments on health care from Democratic and Republican candidates on a large silkscreened broadside. Printed in reverse on the back in black is the full text of the broadside, which shows through to complete the characters and make them legible.
Make a new weight of Helvetica that is not simply a bold or italic, extended or condensed. Your weight should add to, complicate, or personalize Helvetica in some way. We will review your progress in next week’s class.
This assignment is from the class Typographic Research. It is completely inspired by David Reinfurt’s Helvetica Neue R project for Contructs magazine. A few of the weights can be seen on the Constructs website. More weights by Project Projects and Apirat Infahsaeng.