The Art Club hosted a screening of the documentary Helvetica by Gary Hustwit last Friday night. The film is focused entirely on the development and history of the font we read in everyday life. More than any other font design, we read in “Helvetica.” Almost every corporate advertisement is written in it. Companies like Toyota, Jeep, FedEx, Staples, American Airlines, and hundreds of others all implement it due to the design’s “human feeling.” Yet trying to describe it is pretty difficult. It is like trying to “describe off-white paint,” as one designer in the film puts it.
If this doesn’t seem like your typical cup of tea, you’re probably not alone. Although this may seem incredibly interesting to some, if I wasn’t covering it for this week’s paper, there is no way I ever would have attended the event. Like all students at Stevens, I have exams to study for, other clubs to meet with, and maybe a party to go to on a Friday night. Yet, even though the students attending this documentary also had those responsibilities, they took the time to indulge in their common interests with each other.
As a senator and member of the SGA, this was a beautiful thing for me. An event like Techfest costs the undergraduate population between fifty and sixty thousand dollars, with only an estimated 600 students even showing up. With many attendees giving negative feedback to the rest of the campus, it may be safe to say that the event was not worth the roughly $92 per person spent on the event. But this documentary screening Friday night cost a couple of bucks in pizza. And it is not just the money spent per unit of happiness that is beautiful to me either; the students who went to this event were genuinely happy with it because it appealed to their passions. As a community so much more varied in interests than one might see on the surface, we should strive to make more events like this a reality for every group with any passion.
I’m not saying the Art Club is my own personal cup of tea, but the point I’m making is that it doesn’t have to be. I feel proud to belong to a community so incredibly diverse in interests. That is why I loved going to see Helvetica on a Friday night, because that is the kind of event that makes this campus great. It showed me that students really do come together here not always over the big flashy things, but perhaps more importantly over the small yet impactful ones.
