On John’s great review I added Helvetica to my Netflix queue and watched it late last night.
What a fantastic documentary! As a movie I felt it was really well done – great pacing, great interviews and felt like it really found the heart of the story. It started out by talking about the mechanics of the creation of the typeface. But then it dove in deeper to reveal a deeper truth about the role of typeface in our culture, how it reaches out and affects other aspects of design and can become the center of a design instead of just a part. Closed on the clash between those who believed in Helvetica and those who saw Helvetica and its derivatives as simple oppression. Really, a great story about something that we all take for granted.
I feel like I came across this movie at just the right time in my life and career. I’ve had the chance to be exposed to some amazing designers over the last few years and they have really affected the way that I think about a host of issues at every level. I think about design every time that I interact with a product or a service, in my daily interactions with friends and associates, how I think about how to build interesting products or what we should be doing with my current project. The importance of the designers and design thinking as a critical role in making businesses successful. All of these things add up to help me understand what the role is for design in our lives – professional or personal.
Typeface as a metaphor for how we choose to express ourselves is a small part of that overall picture, but an important one. A deeply appropriate movie.
I, for one, find myself as more of a Helvetica man than not. And I am surprised to discover that about myself.
As a total side note it was great to see the inside of the Pentagram offices in New York City. I have some strong memories about that place from the ill-fated OLPC project. From the wonderful workspaces to the conference room with the books that are organized by color instead of topic. Some wonderfully creative people there and it was interesting to be swept back into that, even if it was only for a half and hour. I hope everyone there is doing well.
Did you notice the discussion of the Meta font family? It’s the corporate font for Mozilla and used for Firefox/Thunderbird.
How did you add the IMDB info to the ‘Helvetica’ link?
@steven: Actually, I never made that connection but I did notice the meta font in the movie. Pretty cool!
“the ill-fated OLPC project”
Hey, you make it sound like a dead parrot ;-) People were saying worse things about that “ill-fated Mozilla project” from 1998-2003, that turned out OK.
Helvetica in big point sizes is indeed really cool. When will Mozilla support CSS Web fonts like Safari 3.1 so we can enjoy a renaissance of typography on the Web?
So I watched Helvetica about a month ago at school with a couple of friends (Netflix instant viewing for the DRM-protected win). Most were willing, if somewhat reluctant participants–”you want to watch a movie about a _font_!?”, but when a friend of a friend came by, I couldn’t help myself and told her it was an action movie, “kind of like 24.” She kept looking at me skeptically as we started watching, but it took her a good 25 minutes to realize I was full of it. On the flip side, she ended up really loving it.
I like your point about being surprised to discover that you actually are “more of a Helvetica man than not.” Coming into the movie, I kind of felt that the font was rather overused and blah, but afterwards, I think I got a much better sense of how well Helvetica has stayed modern and relevant in ways I never even realized. Is good design about blending into the background so much that no one even notices you’re there? And if so, what does this say about Firefox users who have no conception or concern about what browser they use?
Forget my question, I had installed IMDb preview FF plugin that did the magic.