Thursday, March 15, 2007

Helvetica - The Film.


Here's another interesting industry related film. It's a documentary by Gary Hustwit about the most used typeface of our time, Helvetica. I think most of the film is spent showing the millions of places that Helvetica is used through out the world. You can watch a two minute and thirty three second clip of applications in Berlin, found in the trailers section of the website, www.helveticafilm.com. Whether or not you like Helvetica or not is up to you but an interesting point made in the film is that the emotional effects of typography are subtle but impacting and because of the abundance of applications of Helvetica, each person has sort of a different experience and emotional tie with it. It's ironic that Helvetica was developed by the Swiss to be a neutral typeface.

The film is screening internationally, mostly in major cities. Designers of all types should at least take the time to visit the site and learn a bit. Another great article about the film is in the March/April edition of I.D. magazine. It's a Q&A with Hustwit that got me pumped-up about seeing the flick. Then again, there are probably many of you who could care less about the type most used on the bathroom sign.