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Corey Ehmke’s home on the web since 1996, IdolHands.com is an alpha-geek blog covering topics in Ruby on Rails development, Mac OS X, electronics, robotics, and other stuff important in the life of a technologist and tinkerer.

Danger: Helvetica

Posted by Corey Ehmke on January 31st, 2009 in Personal | Permanent Link | Share/Save
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Following a lead embedded in a recent post by the intrepid Scott Beale at Laughing Squid, I came across a great series of educational films from the BBC. While I opened my brain to soak up knowledge on topics ranging from the mysterious properties of water to Britain’s strides in calcium reclamation (via conveniently located drop boxes for unused teeth and bones), I was alerted to a dire phenomenon known as the Helvetica Scenario.

Donning my investigative journalism hat, which I keep right next to my political wog hat, I came to an alarming discovery: in the 7 years since the BBC first mentioned the dangers of Helvetica— which it dismissed as a “very, very rare occurence”—, the menace has made the leap from calcium atoms and humans to the Web itself. A quick search on Google revealed that Helvetica is lurking in the cascading style sheets over 15,000 web sites, and in fact almost every Mac and PC includes some variant of this terror.

danger_helvetica.png

What is perhaps most alarming, however, is that aside from a recent mockumentary horror movie exploring the nightmare that is Helvetica, almost no attention has been paid to this phenomenon. So, in an effort to raise public awareness, I have created a set of warning labels suitable for printing onto sticker paper. Please download the file and keep a stack of these stickers on hand at all times. If you see Helvetica in the wild, do your part for public safety and apply the sticker in a visible location.

The print-ready file is available here:

danger-helvetica.pdf.zip (52k PDF)

Astute typographers may note that the sticker itself uses Helvetica, but I can assure you that this particular variant has been neutralized and poses no danger.


Creative Commons License


UPDATE: You might want to check out the Danger: Helvetica gear over at the Idol Hands store.


This entry was posted on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Danger: Helvetica”

  1. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater Says:
    February 3rd, 2009 at 3:45 pm

    BTW, a quickie 3Kx3K PNG render with alpha transparency for cafepressification:

    http://www.thoughtcrime.com/images/dangerhelvetica.png

    Look Around You, and do your part!

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