Dumb Hipster Tattoos

[dooktruck]

graphic designers don't hate helvetica they hate comic sans or insert some other terrible font (here)

[Anisya]

'the people I know' would be the key to my point there....I based my guess on the stories they tell each other. Helvetica is the 'go to font' for 'I can't be bothered to come up with something better' designers. Also your boss will always make you use it when he wants to go safe with a client, no matter how slick and nice your own font would be. But designers I know are not all the designers in the world, although I don't think anyone in the world would even consider comic sans in a serious design.

[JAllen]

@Anisya, if youre a designer, you should watch this. it's interesting, i found the perspectives of some people to be very relatable to tattoo designs.

if you really want to do tattoos as stated in your intro, it would be worth seeing a bigger perspective and power in what already exists and how you can use it rather than the constant attempt to reinvent the wheel.

http://youtu.be/KRaGDp2WMig

[Anisya]

@JAllen,Oh no, I am not a graphic designer. I study Sound and Video Technology. It includes producing animated graphics and captions, subtitles and such. I am constantly around frustrated people who worked, work or will work in 'media'. And that includes graphic designers (students, lectureres and professionals). There is a lot of grief and a lot of complains....that is why I thought it might be the reason someone would have a Helvetica tattoo....but it seems he might have got it out of love....

Oh, we all watched this film and several other documentaries during lectures, but I am glad you posted it here. And I am taking your advice on board, I am on this blog to learn something, like it or not but you are educating a newbie.

[dooktruck]

unfortunately i am a graphic designer...well at least that's what pays the bills

helvetica has its time and place and it is not a bad font

pretty easy to kern works well for body copy legal etc

if all someone is designing are pieces for their book or record album covers then helvetica is sort of boring i guess

i certainly wouldn't get a helvetica tattoo though

[CultExciter]

I too am a designer, and I use Helvetica and Univers when I want to create a Swiss style poster or minimalist layout. It's a beautiful typeface. But the same can be said nowadays for how many companies are using the Gotham typeface. It's gorgeous, but the market is over-saturated with it. It's a fine line, I like to pull in Brockmann, Carson, Timothy Samara, and Bierut as my daily influences.

As for a Helvetica tattoo, it's hipster pastiche, whatever, they don't know shit about Thom DeVita.

[Stewart Robson]

@Anisya I'm a little late to the party here and I haven't yet watched the Helvetica documentary so what I say may be covered there.

In my opinion Helvetica a beautifully designed typeface (it was a typeface before it was a font) which is why it got so overused by cool-guy graphic designers for a while. Anything visual that is used extensively will be rejected by the generation that follows. But blah, blah, blah...

Helvetica is the type equivalent of 'pike style' tattoo lettering. In the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, it just fucking works. Always readable and because of subtle variations, always appropriate. It can look shitty in the hands of an idiot who thinks its easy and doesn't understand the basics.

...I mostly butted in because the BBC uses Gill Sans, not Helvetica. Another very well designed typeface, digitised exceptionally well for screen use. But very different from Helvetica to a trained (or partially trained) eye. Most 'big corporations' don't use Helvetica. They may use a bold, sans-serif font, but it's rarely Helvetica itself.

Comic Sans is one of the few fonts deemed appropriate when designing information for people with learning and/or sight difficulties because the lower-case letters are constructed the same as handwriting. The problem with most graphic designers is they are trying to express themselves instead of communicating in an effective manner. I guess most younger designers now wouldn't even know what a serif's function is. Comic Sans is a fuck-ugly font though.

More dumb tattoos now please.

[JAllen]

@Stewart Robson, it's worth checking out the documentary. like i mentioned, it has an interesting parallel to traditional tattooing in my opinion.

[hogg]

@Stewart Robson, you can take the font nerd out of Photoshop....

[Anisya]

@StewartRobson

@CultExciter

@dooktruck

@JAllen

And that is excatly why I love this forum. No mindless chit-chat but real conversations. Thank You all. Since it was me who derailed this thread I hope this will get it back on track:

[Stewart Robson]

@hogg as a type nerd I object to your assumption I'd use Photoshop to kern and lead my type ;)

[Abellve]

Hahahaha!

[CultExciter]

InDesign a day keeps the doctor away. I NEED TO FIND A STUPID TATTOO TO POST.

[Kev]

Then you're doing it wrong:

[Jack]

this man...

[CultExciter]

This might be the first time in my life when a slice of pizza has repulsed me.

[smiling.politely]

at least this one had the decency to try and hide it...

[Scott R]

@Jack its not funny to make fun of aids patients!

[Musashi]

I see pizza tattoos all the time on blogs and whatnot. WTF. Does.Not.Compute.

[IanBurkhart]

I still don't fully understand what a hipster is. By the looks of these pictures I'd like to keep it that way ha

[bulldog]

I still don't fully understand what a hipster is. By the looks of these pictures I'd like to keep it that way ha

i dont either, is this a US thing or do we have them in the UK too? .

[smiling.politely]

there's a lot of different kinds of hipsters out there... fixie hipsters, conceptual art hipsters, trust fund hipsters, Williamsburg hipsters... it never ends. and they are fairly present in the UK as well. i spent five months abroad at an art college in Wales, and it was about 98% full on hipsters.

in London, from what i understand, Shoreditch is a popular spot for them.

[Anisya]

there's a lot of different kinds of hipsters out there... and they are fairly present in the UK as well. i spent five months abroad at an art college in Wales, and it was about 98% full on hipsters.

.

Agreed. I didn't know what hipsters were either, but now I can honestly say that not only some of the students but also some of the tutors at my Uni (Manchester, Media City UK) are of the hipster kind. Some are my friends though, so it makes me vulnerable to their logic....

[Jack]

If you like someone, they aren't a hipster. Hipsters are dirty. always.

[Gregor]

Its not new, even 20 years ago we would go to Glasgow art school on a night out and there was plenty of bespectacled cardigan wearers there