Mcluhan's Medium Is a Message & Helvetica

The lecture said that knowledge and traditions will pass on through memorized poems in the oral society. Poems will replace the books, so we will have to memorize it in the class. Therefore, memorizing will be more important. Perhaps, variety memorizing skills will appear, and we have to learn it. The college may require “freshmen memorizing course” instead of “freshman writing course” in the present college. We will also debate differently in the class. It will be like classical Greece. Today, we use reasons from written resources such as books, statistics, or graph to support our claim. However, if writing does not exist, we have to prove the claim with only polemics(logic, rhetoric<al ways>). It is because that resources could be limited if we only communicate orally. Therefore, the importance of polemics(logic, rhetoric) will increase. I think that the students in law school will focus on studying rhetoric(logic, rhetoric) rather than precedents. In the view of McLuhan’s notion that the “medium is a message,” I think that the message of the typeface Helvetica is intimateness. It is because that we can see Helvetica in everywhere, and take it for granted. For example, the movie shows that Helvetica have been used from brand logo such as American Apparel to tax forms of IRS(International Revenue Center). It means that Helvetica is always around us, but we do not think it is weird. It is even hard to notice that there is Helvetica because it is intimate to us. This is why companies use Helvetica in their advertisements. No one feel strange while they see advertisement, and people do not have to narrow their eyes to read the text. In the movie, Michael Bierut, said that “Helvetica seems like air. It seems like gravity.” Air and gravity are so intimate to us that we can not feel them. It is also Helvetica. Helvetica has been a part of our life