>In the new computer age, the proliferation of typefaces and type manipulations represents a new level of visual pollution threatening our culture. Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones, and trash the rest.
Why is he so revered again?
he is sexy
>>248325
I kind of agree. There are so many unnecessary sans serif fonts out there. They're poorly executed Helvetica clones most of the time.
>>248367
One word:
Subtle originality
>>248426
That's the exact reasoning that modernists like Vignelli are against, excess. It's not about being original but being better.
Why do you need thousands of typefaces when you have 5 near-flawless ones?
>>248451
to avoid conformity?
>>248456
this desu senpai
Medium.com conveys many messages through unique stories but they all look the fucking same
>no visual pollution
>>248451
Near-flawless like one of Vignellis favourites, Helvetica? That's one of the basic ones he promoted, and it's f a r from flawless.
Come on.
Just because there were no better fitting typefaces to express "contemporary" in the sixties doesn't mean there are none today. Better ones, that is. Vignelli – to me – was just stuck in a certain mindset and a certain period of time, ignorant of an evolving world of graphic design.
I'm on the side of individualism here. Sure, there are too many unnecessary geometric sans serifs out there. However, to paint a bigger picture, I don't want to live in a world of conformity and economization. I read too many distopian books about that.
>>248522
>*dystopian
dammit
>>248325
>I've read your book, you magnificent bastard!
And you're one grumpy motherfucker. Devotes an absurd amount of text in a rant as to why the proportions of North American paper sizes are inferior to International sizes because they mess up his grids.
>In his Vignelli Canon (free PDF book on design), he mentions these six: Garamond (1532), Bodoni (1788), Century Expanded (1900), Futura (1930), Times Roman (1931) and Helvetica (1957) [However, in that booklet he uses 8 different type families: the above six, and Gill Sans and Univers]. Yves Peters' reaction: Massimo Vignelli clearly hasn't got a clue. It's not the first time a quote of his makes me cringe. I hope you appreciate I'm trying real hard to stay polite. Frankly, if I ever heard anyone say: "a music lover should only listen to 5 artists: Elton John, Celine Dion, Billy Joel, Whitney Houston and Luciano Pavarotti" I'd go to great lengths to ridicule the billy sastard. Nevertheless, in the eyes of many designers, he is a role model and an icon.
>>248522
>>248456
Wrote a reply to you two then my browser crashed, so this may wonder a touch.
I'm not defending modernism in an absolute sense, they were (and still are) in many situations overly dogmatic to the point of failure.
But the reasons for why the modernists made certain choices are so obvious (in the historic context of when they were working) that firing out the same post-modern arguments (that have also been shown to be less than perfect) is like shooting into a long-empty barrel. Just because the typeface is used excessively and incorrectly almost every time doesn't mean it isn't an excellent typeface - it's not the types fault the licence is cheap.
Contemporaries in all fields of design who closely align themselves with modernists (lets call them neomodernists because its easy, even if not absolutely correct) understand all the downfalls of modernism and have fully embraces the critique of it by postmodernism and have long since corrected (in their eyes) these issues.
To say that using Helvetica is somehow the rejection of individualism, for a neomodernist, is a demonstrably incorrect argument. Maybe modernists like Vignelli are too strict, but postmodernism showed that having no rules is an equally flawed idea. Lazy / bad design cannot be tarted up by using Helvetica - but that same design isn't made better by consciously not using Helvetica.
>tl:dr Vignelli is obviously wrong, today, but total dismissal of his work is equally narrowminded.