Helvetica

A documentary about a typeface? For those of us who take interest in such things, of course! But if you're one of those who never bothers to change the default font in your Word documents from Times New Roman, then I'd recommend you stay away from this film altogether.

Unfortunately, even those who are keenly aware of typefaces may find this movie disappointing. My main criticisms:

1. It spends long sequences showing us examples of Helvetica signage used in various contexts. Some are elegant and clean, many are torn old posters, ragged pieces of letters peeling off walls, etc. These sequences were artistic and okay at first, but maybe after the fourth one, you find yourself reaching for the fast-forward.

2. It spends the vast majority of its time in interviews with various designers discussing their impressions of the font's "meaning" or its impact in the history of design. This should have been perhaps 30% of the film, instead it is closer to 80%.

3. It doesn't spend enough time looking at the technical details of the font. There are occasional off-hand references by some of the interview subjects to various features of certain letters, but even those segments are not illustrated. I would have loved to see a side-by-side contrast between Helvetica and similar sans-serif fonts used earlier, or perhaps others created since then. In one sequence, we catch a glimpse of one of the original large-scale drawings for one of the letters; I would have enjoyed seeing more of those, larger on the screen, and with explanation of how the various parts work in relation to one another.

With its current affective emphasis, this would have been an acceptable 45-min. documentary, but at an hour and a half, it is far longer than it needs to be. I hoped to walk away with an understanding of what made Helvetica uniquely popular, but that was never clearly shown in any way.

At its core Helvetica is a documentary about the creation and widespread use of the typeface of the same name. If that sounds boring to you, well guess what, it often is.

The film, directed by Gary Hustwit, begins with the birth of the typeface. It was created in 1957 by the Swiss with the hope to create a "perfect" sans-serif typeface. As a side note, a serif is apparently the little "feet" type accents that are on letters of certain typefaces, for example Times New Roman is a serif typeface. The film speaks with several type designers, a profession that I was unaware of, including the designer of Helvetica. Once the viewer has been given an adequate background on the typeface itself, the film begins to change. It wanders away from the typeface itself and becomes a documentary about graphic design. Graphic designers express both their love and hatred for the typeface as well as its effects on the larger world of design, becoming more of a film about modernism and post-modernism as it applies to this world.

Throughout the film, the director goes out into the world to shoot different signs and postings that utilize Helvetica. At the beginning, this is intriguing, often surprising the viewer with just how often this single typeface is used. However, as the director employs this technique more and more often, to the point where it seems built into the transitions, it becomes annoying. By the end, I felt like I was just being shown the same images in a film that no longer was truly just about the typeface itself.

If I were a graphic designer I may have found this film more intriguing and interesting, but sadly, this is not the case. It is shot well and the interviews seem to give a balanced opinion on the use of the typeface, but as a film, it is stretched thin, feeling overlong at its lean 80 minutes.

This movie is brilliant. It's a documentary about the creation of the Helvetica font, sure. But it's also: a musing on the history of modern graphic design. A diatribe (by some) about a font seen as style-killingly ubiquitous. A visit to favorite graphic designs of years past. A reflection about what our fonts say about us.

If you are a graphic designer, you'll love it. If you live with a graphic designer, you'll shake your head and say, "Yup" in recognition. If you don't pay any attention to graphic design, you may think about it just a tiny bit more after seeing this movie. And you will definitely come out of it with SOME opinion about the Helvetica font.

This is an 80 minute long movie about a font. People talk about the font, the history, the meaning and the significance of helvetica. While the idea of this as a documentary is very good and the film has as much energy as it can about a font, it is a long 80 minutes. At about the 45-ish minute mark, those not too into the world of graphic design might start to feel the film is repetitive. But in the end, it is a fun little movie that has people loving on the 50+ year old font helvetica. If that is your idea of a good time, you'll love this. If you say to yourself, "80 minutes about a typeface?" - this movie may not be for you.

Helvetica screened this week at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX where it was very well-received. In a million years it would never have occurred to me to do a documentary on a type font. The film makers somehow came up with the idea of doing a cultural history of the Helvetica font which has become the almost universal default modern font over the past 50 years. Fonts are almost like the air we breathe. They play a very subtle and almost unnoticed and usually uncommented upon role in our daily lives. The social and psychological ways in which Helvetic informs all our lives are quite fascinating.

Helvetica is a humorous film that combines a series of interview clips with a variety of often rather quirky graphic font designers with shot of various street signs and corporate logos. The film provides a great deal of insight into the role of the Helvetica font in shaping Western culture. Helvetica is both entertaining and informative in that it provides great insight into a ubiquitous aspect of modernity about which most of us are completely oblivious. I hope that many people get the opportunity to see this unusual and insightful film, because it opens a fascinating window for better understanding our society. Since versions of Helvetica are also the default font on most computers, many of us type in Helvetica constantly without even realizing it.

As I walked home from the film, I couldn't help noticing that many of the street signs in Austin appeared to be in Helvetica.