The Design Polymath

The Vignelli Forever series of posters by Anthony Neil Dart.

Remembering Massimo Vignelli (January 10, 1931 – May 27, 2014) one the most prolific graphic designers of our time. Subconsciously, it's always been hard for me to disassociate Vignelli and his oeuvre from the font Helvetica. They have to come in tow. I can't speak of one without thinking of the other. His best loved quote "If you can design one thing, then you can design everything.", draws huge parallels with Helvetica's wide-spread use and abuse.

Apart from, of-course his well known love for the typeface which he expresses on Gary Hustwit's documentary and in a lot of his work like the legendary American Airlines branding. For the young and impressionable designers of my generation, Helvetica had a love/hate connotation already riding high. We were sort of in the cusp or flux where the general attitude towards the typeface was experiencing a wide-felt change. In times like these we looked up to doyens such as Vignelli who put it in as prosaic a manner as – "You can say, "I love you," in Helvetica. And you can say it with Helvetica Extra Light if you want to be really fancy. Or you can say it with the Extra Bold if it's really intensive and passionate, you know, and it might work." (Excerpt from the documentary – Helvetica)