请网友在楼下回帖听写，听力原文在本楼。 [post=1] Helvetica Is a Tale GARETH MITCHELL: Well finally there are some real characters in the history of computing, but some of the best known have become the several dozen that form the letters numbers and symbols of the Helvetica font. If you are a Mac user you will immediately recognize the type as apple default font, but Helvetica also pops up on sightposts, shop windows and even in high fashion, it's totally ubiquitous and its fifty years old this year, and if you are wondering what the point or the fourteen point, even punctuating such an event is, well one film maker has made a whole documentary telling the whole story of Helvetica, digital planet’s own man of letters Peter Price has been to see the movie, and as he now reports. Helvetica has quite a tale to tell. PETER PRICE: It's not often that Digital Planet makes it to a film premier, and its really very rare that we get to see a film that’s all about a font. It's called Helvetica and along with about a hundred other people I’m queuing up outside to see it, and James and Nick are two designers that have come to see it this evening. Nick why on earth have you come to see this film? NICK: Well Helvetica has always been one of my favorite font suites, I actually wrote an article about it in a magazine once. So when I found out that this was on obviously I had to come down. PETER PRICE: So James you work with font and graphic design everyday, so why do you think that graphic design has picked Helvetica over other fonts? JAMES: There is an element of laziness to it. I think, I mean it works in a lot of things it's kind of unfussy, you know it gets the point across PETER PRICE: Well I've moved over to the foyer of the cinema now, and the audience are busy taking their seats in the theatre, so why is Helvetica still going strong fifty years on from it's creation by Swiss designers, Max media, and Edward Hoffman? That’s the question that this film tries to answer and it does that by asking graphic designers around the world, such as this man Neval Brody a graphic designer based in London. NEVAL BRODY: In a way Helvetica is club; it’s a mark of membership; it’s a badge that’s a part of modern society. We share the same ideals its well rounded it not going to be damaging or dangerous. PETER PRICE: Well the film is over and the partying inside is begun, but I’ve managed to go outside and catch a few words with the director Gary Husswitts. So Gary, welcome to Digital Planet. GARY HUSSWITTS: Thanks Peter. PETER PRICE: So tell me first, this seems like the strangest subject for a film. What set you on this path? GARY HUSSWITTS: Well I just…I like graphic design, and type I have been a kind of an amateur graphic designer for the past twenty years and it’s just a film I wanted to see. PETER PRICE: As we've seen in the film Helvetica is now prevalent in our everyday lives, why do you think it is so highly regarded by the graphic designers of today? GARY HUSSWITTS: Well I think it’s…you know, one of its strong points is it's very flexible in a way that you can pretty much use it for anything. I've seen it used for garages, dry cleaners, and locksmiths and people, but it is also used as a logo for very high fashion culture houses. So its versatility is probably a big factor. It's available everywhere that’s another thing, I mean the way a graphic design type of graphic technology has changed in the past twenty years, Helvetica has benefited from that. It’s just available to pretty much anyone in the world who wants to make a sign or a logo or anything. PETER PRICE: Something that is mentioned in the film is the link between Helvetica and its choice by APPLE when they released the Mac intosh as being the default font. So how has that affected it? GARY HUSSWITTS: Yeah yeah yeah… I think when Steve Jobbs and Apple first were planning the Mac intosh, I think, a big thing for them was to have it be accepted as a serious design tool for graphics. So I think it was important for them to get a few name type faces on there like Times new roman and Helvetica. If they would just make up their own type faces, and slapped them on there, I don't think it would have been taken seriously by graphic design establishment. So that was important for them, you know, I think Line A Type which is the company that licensed Helvetica to Apple didn't really know what they where getting into. I think they thought of this company very well, you know, a silly computer. No one’s going to take this thing seriously and of course you know it has completely changed the way that fonts and types are used. PETER PRICE: But it's quite strange, isn't it, in the world of technology where everything moves at such a fast pace, that this one tiny part of Apple's decisions to have this font on their computer, is still in use! It’s still there twenty years on! GARY HUSSWITTS: Yeah... Well that’s the thing with digital files. Once they are out there they just keep getting passed around and passed around and copied and copied. Since Helvetica was really one of the first digital fonts it was widely available. It's just like a virus it just spread everywhere PETER PRICE: You've traveled all round the world to make this documentary, so have you been surprised how widely it's used regardless which country you’re in? GARY HUSSWITTS: (laughs) Yes definitely. If you go to Japan the signs are all in Japanese characters, but then there will be Helvetica that would be the English translation. It is strange to see and what's interesting is it's used in exactly the same way almost. In every country the internet has spread people’s knowledge in use of different fonts. PETER PRICE: So is there another font out there that is going to challenge Helvetica in the internet age? GARY HUSSWITTS: I don't think so. Just because of that fact because there are so many fonts available, and there are so many new fonts being designed every week, you have to think about when Helvetica originally came out. Bringing out a new type fits something that took years and years. And it wasn't like today where anybody in a half hour can through together there a font out of their own handwriting, and then you know email it to friends. Now it's changed so much and digital technology it's changed the way we use fonts, it's also changed the way that normal average people non designers use type faces all the time. I mean most of us never even know what a font was ten and fifteen years ago and now it's something that we use everyday and everyone uses it everyday. So Helvetica has a head start I guess on any of these new comers to the font world. GARETH MITCHELL: Gary Husswitts talking there to Peter Price. Instantly that film Helvetica is showing at the ICA in London everyday until the twenty seventh of September and then it moves on to Amsterdam. So what do you think of this then Bill? BILL: I went to the ICA to see it because I love fonts. I think it was really nice to hear Neval Brody on air as well cause he's an old friend of mine from the nineties where we worked together on font related conferences fuse ninety four and such. I have to say as much as I love Helvetica there are better fonts for online use (Trebuchet and Verdana) were designed to look good on the web. Now I suspect over the years we may see less interest in Helvetica than others, but it will be interesting to see how it goes. GARETH MITCHELL: Ok but there will be a movie to be made out of these new fonts I'm sure. [/post]
[此贴子已经被作者于2008-2-19 13:02:50编辑过]
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发表于 2008-2-14 09:46
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