But that's not really what this movie is about. Helvetica premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2007. I love the subject matter! document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); document.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); WatchDocumentaries.com | Games | Quizzes | Contact |Privacy & Terms | Manage Cookies |Advertise | DMCA. WebHelvetica is a neo-grotesque or realist design, one influenced by the famous 19th century typeface Akzidenz-Grotesk and other German and Swiss designs. Helvetica is probably the most popular typeface on Earth today, after its invention in 1957 by Max Meidinger and Eduard Hoffman at the Haas Type Foundry, Switzerland. I have some writing background in the music press. Miedinger and Hoffmann set out to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in its form, and could be used on a wide variety of signage. At its core Helvetica is a documentary about the creation and widespread use of the typeface of the same name. Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. (We think typography is black and white, he says. the conclusion of one line of reasoning was, l can't explain it l just love, l just like, l just get a total kick out of it. Learn more about funding opportunities with ITVS. Michael Bierut: Everywhere you look you see typefaces. All that hunting to the next typeface every, and l can still remember as students that, l think all three of us grew up in the '70s, So for us it is almost like a natural mother, lt's not that we l mean, a lot of people. l've got to, You know, l wake up and usually l want to, l mean, everybody puts their history into. And, corporate identity in the sixties, that's what, piles of goofy old brochures from the fifties, and all it implies, and this is what we're, they'd have a crisp bright white piece of, Can you imagine how bracing and thrilling, with your mouth just caked with filthy dust. Other designers dislike Helvetica on the grounds of ideology. Erik Spiekermann: I mean, everyone puts their history into their work. Some designers find Helvetica to be predictable and boring. Helvetica is one of the most common sans-serif typefaces, and it is used in logos for companies from Jeep to Tupperware. oh it's brilliant when it's done well. Directed by Gary Hustvit, the film is the first of a trilogy examining Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day. I eventually got round to watching Objectified which is a similar documentary about design and, without realising that the two films were from the same director, it motivated me to get on and watch Helvetica. David Carson emphasizes the difference between legibility and good communication. But they'll be, And to my way of thinking, that is a huge, Something about the fact that people keep, that would sort of say it's not just because, it's not just because it was associated with, the rightness of the way the c strokes are, l mean, l wouldn't have believed that those, Yet we sort of have nearly fifty years of, daring people to fix it. Hustwit reports that many nondesigners who saw Helvetica have told him it changed the way they look at their environment. And we expected to walk out of the 2-hour class bored-stiff. Helvetica is considered to be one of the most popular and widely used typefaces in the world. lt. the meaning is in the content of the text, you know, you find yourself sitting next to, or a train and they ask you sooner or later, but then will say, ''l thought they were all, Since l did some work for Microsoft in the, he didn't push me to follow in his footsteps, when l left school, high school in the UK, l, had a year to fill before going to university, where l spent a year learning what turned. Of course that may be a bit of an exaggeration, however it is pretty close to the truth. Must watch for designer, to add a perspective about helvetica. there to just hold and display and organize, the information. Helvetica was nominated for the 2008 Independent Spirit's Truer than Fiction Award. They give words a certain coloring. Offering a perspective from outside the profession, Savan talks about Helveticas social role in cleaning up corporate images. . After the hurly-burly of the El Bulli kitchen, day two of the New View film season sees a quieter world, though one just as arcane and cerebral. and l was like, oh man, how disappointing, And l went through all my fonts, which at, uhm, well, it still is for that matter, and, And l finally came to the bottom and there, which of course now it's Zapf Dingbats so. Jonathan Hoefler: And Helvetica maybe says everything, and that's perhaps part of its appeal. Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. And the aim with type design always is to, alphabet has to look like the other alphabet. The subject is at once esoteric and universal. There is a global conspiracy scheming to control the general populace that is run by the most unlikely suspects: graphic designers. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th Elegantly shot by Luke Geissbuhler, the film presents interviews with prominent designers spanning three generations, from old-guard heroes Vignelli, Matthew Carter, and Wim Crouwel, to mid-career pros Michael Bierut and David Carson, and young hipsters Danny van den Dungen (from Experimental Jetset) and Michael C. Place (formerly with the Designers Republic). Its use became a . His is the first full-fledged interview, and as we see him sketch letters in pencil and talk about the importance of spacing, it is easy to think that the characters are his own invention. It just makes my words visible. They wanted to get away from the orderly, the horrible slickness of it all, as they saw it, lf l see a brochure now, with lots of white, that has like six lines of Helvetica up on the, the overall communication that says to me, l probably was the last generation who got, ln general, l was always fairly bored, you, lt just didn't seem a very interesting task to. A novel idea back then to use two words close together but separated only with color. It features a lot of designers and typographers who have widely diverging viewpoints on the Helvetica font. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. Helvetica was Hustwits directorial debut and the first of a Show more It not a letter that bent to shape; it's a letter that lives in a powerful matrix of surrounding space. It was very unusual in how the entire movie was based on the typeface/font. use Helvetica is typically Dutch, l think, and that's why l'm never really impressed. (You know, the one that looks like this .) Helvetica isnt originalits based on an For us, the visual disease is what we have, A good typographer always has sensitivity, Typography is really white, it's not even, it's not the notes, it's the space you put, and the novelty at the time was the fact of, lt's the only airline in the last forty years, changing American Airlines is still the, l can write the word 'dog' with any typeface, But there are people that think when they, What Helvetica is: it's a typeface that was. In a million years it would never have occurred to me to do a documentary on a type font. l've never sort of woken up with a typeface, you know, like some people . Helvetica is a 2007 documentary about the font directed by Gary Hustwitt; that goes through the history of the font. Imagining the film from an outsiders perspective, I might have been confused early on that Vignelli created Helvetica. In contrast, shooting printed matter directly from books or magazines works surprisingly well throughout the documentary, especially in a scene where Bierut shows us quirky typefaces from a magazine in the 1950s, followed by a Coke ad from the 60s set in Helvetica. lt's. This was in the days before blogging made everything cheap and easy, it cost money. "fonts." or aesthetically or culturally or politically. This typeface can be seen all over the world. l'm a Gemini, l had my birthday yesterday, So l have this horrible thing, which comes, They're never perfect. Vignelli is a lover of Helvetica, for its great legibility and modern design. l mean you can't imagine anything moving; it's a letter that lives in a powerful matrix of. Helvetica (the documentary): a summary and an opinionated review A documentary about a font seems like a wonderfully geeky idea. With the first 20 minutes I was intrigued and interested, unfortunately as the minutes ticked by my interested faded and the intrigue had completely disappeared. Bands and musicians that contributed to the documentary's soundtrack include Four Tet, The Album Leaf, Kim Hiorthy, Caribou, Battles, Sam Prekop of The Sea and Cake, and El Ten Eleven. that most people would just gloss over, l, The biggest thing for me in terms of design, is to get a sort of emotional response from. After Helvetica comes Objectified about Industrial Design and then Urbanized about architecture and urban design. l certainly can write a few, lt just had all the right connotations we, The 1950s is an interesting period in the, after the horror and the cataclysm of the. Independent Television Service is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, aprivate corporation funded by the American people. And it was many years later that someone explained to me that, basically, there was this group that spent a lot of time trying to organise things, get some kind of system going, and they saw me going in and throwing that out the window, which I might've done, but it wasn't the starting point, that wasn't the plan. A Highly Unusual and Insightful Documentary, Engaging and accessible documentary with good structure and contributors. Over the years, a wide range of variants have been released in different weights, widths and sizes, as well as matching designs for a range of non-Latin alphabets. Helvetica is a 2007 American independent feature-length documentary film about typography and graphic design, centered on the Helvetica typeface. l lived in that period. Visuals for freedom of expression in Peru, How to create a vector character from sketch. Strong and modern serif typefaces were becoming quite popular in Europe and the rest of the world for just that reason. One of the few places the film breaks down visually is its attempt to animate posters from the 1950s. However, I felt like there wasn't much to this film. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will At a time when many European countries were recovering from the ravages of war, Helvetica presented a way to express newness and modernity. The two perspectives come together humorously toward the end of the film, when the Swiss publisher and graphic designer Lars Mller walks through London and points his finger, with deadpan sobriety, at various examples of Helvetica. The name is meant to be boring and neutral; and, indeed, Helvetica has been referred to as the little black dress of typefaces. In the end Helvetica is not just about Helvetica. Type is saying things to us all the time. They didn't know what they were caring for. you can have a film studio for ten grand, you definitely can be a designer with one, similar tools as the people who do this for a, lf all these people have the tools to make, lt's not just opening a template in Corel, lt's not about having the latest version of, lf you don't have the eye, if you don't a. the program's not going to give it to you. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. Compare the logos of American Airlines and American Apparel. Or you can say it in Extra Bold if it's really, l can write . Massimo Vignelli: You can say, "I love you," in Helvetica. Hustwit on his inspiration for the film: "When I started this project, I couldn't believe that a film like this didn't exist already, because these people are gods and goddesses. 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