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interview with jessica helfand

The topic of notable book jackets came and went on TYPO-L a few months back, and I regret that I did not cast my vote for the work of Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel on Econometrics, by Fumio Hayashi. It’s certainly my favorite jacket in my home library, whether the subject be statistics/econometrics, design, or otherwise.

I recently asked Ms Helfand about the design of Econometrics, as well as about her new book, Reinventing the Wheel. My questions and her answers follow:

JC: At what point did you realize that the author’s name – Fumio Hayashi – and the title – Econometrics – had the same number of characters (and that O was the fifth letter), and that you could incorporate this into the design?

JH: It is, I think, fairly typical for designers to engage in an exploratory sketching process when beginning to imagine a potential design solution, and this is exactly what happened here. As my knowledge of economics is fairly limited, I thought it best to try and work with what I had: a long title and byline can sometimes be untenable, but in this case it was fortuitous.

JC: What is it about the design – specifically, the colors, the type, the fine grid around the title and author's name – that might be linked to the field of econometrics?

JH: Let me be the first to admit that my knowledge of mathematics and statistics is rather limited. However, to the extent that design can approximate an idea, the justified alignments were thought to loosely represent something
quantifiable and resolved – as opposed to, say, chaos theory.

JC: How did you come to choose the typeface – FF Marten?

JH: FF Marten was designed by Martin Wenzel, a German type designer who studied in the Netherlands. It's very geometric and elegant, yet quite readable as well. "Less is more," explains Wenzel in decribing his formal intentions with this typeface. "Use it for 'Loud and Clear.'" I thought it provided a good balance between pragmatism and expressiveness, a slightly more decorative take on the practical.

JC: Could you describe your choice of the colors of the letters in the title – mint, peach, and bronze – and their interplay?

JH: The use of color in Japan is quite different than in the west, and colors there have strong and specific connotations. While Hayashi's book is in
English, I felt that the fact that he is Japanese needed to somehow be reflected on the cover. So the colors are, I suppose, an attempt to create a
harmonious palette that combines both Eastern and Western sensibilities. I have to confess, though, that the author and his wife are close personal friends of mine: knowing them as I do, I had a sense that they would like these color choices.

JC: I’m enjoying your new book, Reinventing the Wheel, and I especially like the cover illustration, which is derived from “The Wheel of Life,” on p 8. I also like your choice of typefaces (Knockout, by Jonathan Hoefler, and Hightower, by Tobias Frere-Jones). What led you to use them?

JH: In our studio we are big fans of Jonathan and of Tobias, who teaches with me at Yale. (Let me take this opportunity to say that Jonathan Hoefler's new typeface, Requiem, is nothing short of perfection. I would be perfectly happy to use it for everything I ever design the rest of my life. Period.) Knockout was originally designed for Sports Illustrated, and included a suite of weights that were intended for editorial display. These fonts condense beautifully, and although the average viewer wouldn't know it, they are identified by qualifying titles wittily adapted from the boxing ring (Welterweight, Heavyweight, etc.). We felt that Knockout contrasted well with the quiet elegance of Hightower, which was originally developed, as I understand it, for the American Institute of Graphic Arts and named for its former director, Carolyn Hightower. It's one of my favorites.

JC: Many of the wheels serve to provide objective, quantitative answers to discrete questions. Others, such as Arnold Palmer’s “Dial Your Problem” Golf Fixer (p 132) or the Handwriting Analysis Wheel (p 134), provide more nebulous, speculative solutions to qualitative questions. In your experience, do you find that design questions or problems can sometimes be reduced to formulaic solutions such as those that a wheel might offer, or is there simply no wheel big enough?

JH: In spite of the fact that all designers strive to resolve ideas to the best of their abilities, I can't say that design solutions operate on the basis
of finding a formula to arrive at a solution. In fact, formulaic solutions to design problems tend to restrict the kind of original thinking that makes
design worth doing in the first place. While design can and does benefit from certain kinds of strategic thinking – the modular systems that Le
Corbusier introduced in his post-war architecture come to mind, patterns of modules that repeated yet through variation and permutation, allowed for
different domestic needs to be met – I wouldn't liken this to the kind of finite, quantifiable evidence represented in information wheels, or volvelles. But I still love them.
27-September 2002