Thoughts from the Dirty City

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. Helvetica is currently screening at film festivals, museums, design conferences, and cinemas worldwide, and is now available on DVD. Get more info about the film…

At 80 minutes long, this little movie gives an insight not only to the nature of typography, but also how designers view type and the way typography transforms the everyday. A tall order for an independent documentary about a typeface designed in the 50’s.

Filmmaker Gary Hustwit has a way of traversing the minutia of type as if it were a mountain, vast and a little bit dangerous. Interviews with master designers such as Massimo Vignelli (creator of the directional signs in New York’s subway system) and David Carson (author of many a design books) are interspersed with slides of signs, storefronts, products and government letterhead boasting Helvetica.

Esoteric, and passionate the interviews both praise and condemn the use of Helvetica. Some proclaiming it as a conceptual breakthrough, and symbol of globalization while others criticize it as being the lowest form of type and a symbol of conformity. Regardless of which side you lean to, anyone with any interest in design will gain something from watching Helvetica.