Recently, I watched a fascinating little documentary called Helvetica, which explores the ubiquitous nature of the font of the same name. It has been 50 years since the font made its debut. Since then, it has become the standard for brand logos, government documents, street signs, and word processing (Windows uses Arial–a cheap rip-off of Helvetica).

Helvetica typifies modern sensibilities. It is clean, efficient, easy to read, and utterly neutral. The font is considered by many to be the perfect expression of neutralism. In the documentary, graphic designer Wim Crouwel reflects, “It should be neutral. It shouldn’t have a meaning in itself. The meaning is in the content of the text and not in the typeface.” It is a disembodied, gnostic font. It is universal. And it woos us to conformity.

In the 80s, postmodernism began to challenge the reign of Helvetica. In a new era of subjectivity, typographers began to rebel against the status quo as they designed expressive fonts that reinforced the meaning of their signified content. This troubled some of the typographic establishment, who saw this group of young typographers as “completely confused by that disease that was called postmodernism…[they] were just going around like chickens without their heads by using all kinds of typefaces…they didn’t know what they were caring for, they only knew what they were against…and what they were against was Helvetica.”One of those “headless chickens” was David Carson. Carson saw the hegemony of Helvetica as artistically stifling. In the documentary, he exhorts: “Don’t confuse legibility with communication…just because something is legible, doesn’t mean it communicates. And more importantly, it doesn’t mean it communicates the right thing.”Does this debate sound familiar? Maybe the emerging church is simply trying to design a new font to tell the story of God? Though it probably goes deeper than that. But at the very least, we are trying to embrace the notion that form cannot be divorced from function, nor medium from message. We are trying to redesign the church–and indeed Christianity itself. Not so that we can remake Jesus Christ in our own image. But so that we can set the Gospel free from status quo. We inherited the Church of Helvetica, and wonder if it sufficiently communicates the message.

About Mark Van Steenwyk

Mark Van Steenwyk is a member of Missio Dei. He is a speaker, writer, educator, and grassroots organizer. With the support of the Central Plains Mennonite Conference, he travels to radical and intentional communities around the country to help network and offer support.