Helvetica Just Wins

December 3, 2024


As someone who cares a lot about fonts, I really don't care much about fonts. I found out I like Martian Mono the best for headers, so I just started using that and never looked back. For everything else, I use the system font. It just works, and looks good enough.

However, in cases where I need a body font and I cannot use the system font, I use Helvetica as the body font. And I hate it because Helvetica is just too good of a font to the point it's annoying!

Every designer out there loves to just absolutely cream on Helvetica, and for good reason. The font looks sexy, works well, and is awesome. But that's the problem, it's too awesome, to the point it's overused. Except it isn't overused, because it's just too good to the point where it's expected.

I put Helvetica on my resume, and everyone was complimenting just how well the fonts worked together. No they did not work together, I slapped Helvetica on at the last minute. It might work, but it doesn't work well enough.

I think we need to go 5 years without being able to use Helvetica, so there ends up becoming a cultural reset on it.