Dub dot dash

I heart Gotham
From the Helvetica Film newsletter... "Unless you've been avoiding television, newspapers, and all other forms of mass media for the past few months, you've probably seen Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's "Change We Can Believe In" and "Stand for Change" banners. The typophiles among you have realized that the "change" font Obama's campaign uses is Gotham, designed by Hoefler & Frere-Jones, originally as a commission for GQ Magazine.

Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones spoke about the creation of Gotham during our interview for Helvetica, and looking back at their description of what GQ wanted from the font, it sounds surprisingly Obama-esque. "GQ had a dual agenda of wanting something that would look very fresh, yet very established, to have a credible voice to it," says Hoefler. It also needed to look very masculine and "of-the-moment." Mission accomplished.

Watch this out-take interview from the film about the origins of Gotham."


Speaking of Gotham, New York is the home of graffiti, an artform that goes back over 35 years, a lifetime in pop culture terms. Helen Clark has decided that it must be destroyed in Aotearoa.

Some media pundits are even calling for a ban on spraycans, which would result in the sales of felt-tip marker pens (a fave with taggers) skyrocketing. Let's ban them too, and let's ban crayons while we're at it. Let's take away the means of expression, and then these frustrated youths will have to find some other outlet - like selling drugs to your kids.

As No Right Turn puts it "Helen Clark's "war on tagging" is in fact a war on kids."

Honestly, if this election year becomes about demonising the youth, it's just like Johnny Rotten said - There is no future for you. What do you think kids will do when you tell them that?