I came across this really interesting article on mobile typography at the Ministry of Type blog. It spells out the difference between the iPhone and the average mobile phone.

It’s also the only phone that’s been advertised purely on its UI, because that’s what the whole thing is about. The adverts for the Samsung D840 showed you the hardware buttons and how the glossy front of the phone is so reflective it can be used as a mirror, but with no showing off of the UI. The Motorola RAZR had a similar set of ads - you’re invited to gawp at the thin, sleek hardware, but you’re not shown the UI. Same for most of the Nokia ads in fact. That’s because the default UI is at best workable, at worst, hideous.

Why is most mobile UI design unusable, unresponsive, and ugly? Here’s one theory: “If the UI of these other phones was usable, responsive and beautiful, there’d be little need for themes and a big source of revenue (from advertising on the theme sites alone) would disappear.”

I’m not sure if this is a serious theory, but there might be some truth in it. Desperate to upgrade their poor interface experiences to a superior one, users purchase a new theme, hoping it’ll solve their problems. Unfortunately, themes are superficial solutions to mobile interface problems. Anyway, I don’t think this theory works, though it does highlight a problematic approach to interface design.

Manufacturers need to address the deeper problems with interface design on the mobile phone. They must focus on making software and hardware more powerful in order to accommodate users’ needs, as the mobile phone becomes a web-browsing device as well as a phone. Manufacturers will, and are, shifting from seeing a mobile phone as a mobile phone, to seeing it as a mobile internet device as well. Nokia admitted in May that they’re now competing with Apple, Microsoft and Google.

Mobile’s restrictions are frustrating both for users and for designers. One of the most frustrating things for me right now, to use one example, is working with antialiased outlines on mobile phone graphics. For those unfamiliar with the term, antialias means, in plain English, the smoothing process between the object and the background, whether font or graphic element. (Here’s a simple illustration.)

Mobile interfaces, composed of typography and graphic elements, suffer because of this lack of support for alpha antialiasing across devices. When I say mobile interfaces “suffer”, I really mean users. Lack of wide support for alpha antialiasing is just one example of the inadequacies of mobile interfaces. However, inadequacies present new, interesting challenges, both for designers working with the imposed restrictions, as well as companies spotting opportunities for improvement.

I’m not really sure what I’ve got myself into. Feeling a little pressured by the fact tickets were being reserved for both girl geeks and those who hadn’t attended a BarCamp before, I haphazardly signed up to attend BarCamp Brighton 3, which is being held at Sussex University on the 6th–7th September. (It is just after dConstruct, which I’m also attending – I’m hoping to glean some presentation skills from the excellent speakers.) Tickets for BarCamp Brighton 3 sold out within 10 minutes, which, of course, made me feel lucky and compelled to actually go.

I know it’s “just” a BarCamp, but I can’t help wondering what the hell I’m doing. Public speaking was something I despised at school and university, and generally I tried my utmost to avoid it. In fact, public speaking and exercise were my two least favourite things. In some grand twist of irony, I now visit a gym three times a week (paying an obscene fee to do so), and I’m attending a BarCamp – voluntarily!

So, I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to talk about. Typography was my specialism at university, and I know a fair amount about how typography works (mainly in print), and, of course, the history of typography. What interests me most about typography is printing. There are obvious parallels with printing and with the web: both deal with the dissemination of information, with literacy, and the flow and sharing of ideas. I wrote my dissertation on the history of the broadside ballad, which was the first low-level way of communicating thought through cheap print. I can’t imagine having written about anything that is more meaningful to me.

I’m going to use a blog post I wrote a few months ago on ‘Twitter and the Crystal Goblet’ as a starting point, and come up with a twenty-minute presentation on transparency in mobile experience design. That way, I’ll usefully combine my three loves: typography, experience design, and mobile. Oh: and Twitter. (I’m also contemplating calling the presentation what dead typographers can teach us about designing for delightful mobile experiences.)

Thoughts welcome. Presentation tips very welcome.

Icelandic illustrator/artist/graphic designer Siggi Eggertsson has the most interesting work I’ve seen recently. A “post-modern impressionist”, his work has a maturity beyond his age (24). In 2006, Print Magazine named him as one of the brightest design stars under 30. He already has a formidable client list including Nike, H&M, and Coca Cola, to name a few.

Most interesting to me, his work is underwritten by formal rules and systems, which is more common in graphic design than illustration. I have just asked him if he feels graphic design has influenced his work as an illustrator, but he said that he doesn’t like to categorise his work as “art”, “illustration”, or “graphic design”.

So, I’m going to leave it there, and share a few cool pieces of his work that I particularly like:

Yesterday I watched Helvetica, the movie, on the train to Oxford from Brighton. I would dare to suggest this documentary is interesting to normal people as well as geeks working with typography, as it is very well directed and there are even laugh out loud moments (not good when you’re sitting on a crowded train).

It was a strange experience to watch this movie because I know so many of the figures speaking, through their books, articles, and graphic design work. To actually hear accents and see faces added a new interesting dimension to my previous knowledge. Michael Bierut is as engaging in interview as his articles on Design Observer (perhaps written editorship isn’t humour-friendly, as Bierut was one of the funniest speakers in the documentary), and Rick Poynor, of Eye Magazine fame, is a smart and engaging speaker as well.

The typeface Helvetica is special because it is ubiquitous as air. It is now an ever-present and perhaps permanent visual fixture of modern life. We have all seen Helvetica; Jonathan Hoefler suggested that people perhaps knew what Helvetica was before they knew what a font was. A joint creation of Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann, Helvetica was born in Münchenstein, Switzerland, at the Haas typefoundry. The Haas typefoundry is a fairly nondescript warehouse building, and was quite a visual contrast to the previous shots of New York city which showed Helvetica in use on the top of buses, on huge billboards, on shop signs and corporate identities.

Helvetica and Akzidenz-Grotesk

Initially named Neue Haas Grotesk, Linotype suggested it was renamed to Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland. Miedinger argued that a typeface cannot be named after a country, so he in turn suggested a corruption of the word Helvetia: Helvetica. Linotype agreed, and Helvetica was born. What’s really interesting to me is that Helvetica was designed by Haas to compete with Akzidenz-Grotesk (see above image to compare with Helvetica), a Swiss typeface already on the market. It’s still not clear in my mind why Helvetica enjoyed fame, wide-usage, and now, perhaps bizarrely, movie fame, while Akzidenz-Grotesk languished in relative obscurity. It’s possible the United States-friendly name “Helvetica” had something to do with it; perhaps Miedinger was especially successful in his goal to remake Akzidenz-Grotesk as a “more even and unified” typeface. I’m not sure. Perhaps it was both.

Massimo Vignelli, another funny speaker and typographic genius, I was less familiar with. Vignelli started the New York branch of Unimark International in 1966, the firm that designed the American Airlines logo. Designed around fifty years ago, the American Airlines logo is still in use today. American Airlines in red and blue, and in Helvetica. How could it be more American, how could it be better? I think this example underlined that Helvetica is a rare, timeless typeface. Although it is around fifty years old, the corporate identity still looks so new, modern, and clean:

American Airlines logo designed by Massimo Vignelli at Unimark

Vignelli gave some interesting and very funny insights into type. I agree with his view that type should not be expressive, or that it should aim to express the information the words contain. A typeface should not draw attention to itself as a typeface. Vignelli disagrees with the people who think the word dog should look like a dog. Worse, he says, there are people who think the word dog should bark. “They have a different point of view from mine.”

In conclusion, this movie is about a typeface that has been successful in being completely nondescript, so nondescript that it’s been adopted across modern visual culture to communicate brands, instructions, and information clearly and ubiquitously. Helvetica is also remarkable for its flexibility: as Vignelli said, you can say “I love you” in Helvetica (and in Helvetica Extra Light if you want to be really fancy; extra bold if you want to communicate intensity), and remarkably, as Vignelli says, you can also say “I hate you” in Helvetica. It’s a chamaeleon typeface that can at once make Urban Outfitters look “cheeky”, and serious corporations appear efficient and professional. It’s a flexible, clear, modern, timeless typeface that doesn’t distract with decoration, and I think Helvetica successfully fulfills Paul Renner’s vision of a unified, single typeface, which was his vision for Futura.

Futura

Now a movie has been made about Helvetica, I wonder if its time is up?

I guess we’ll have to use Neuzeit instead…