Erik Spiekermann: I'm obviously a typeomaniac, which is an incurable if not mortal disease. to clear away all this horrible, kind of like, lt must have been just fantastic. Helvetica was designed in Switzertland by Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffman at a time after the war in 1957 when people needed a sense of order. They instead prefer hand-illustrated typefaces centered around Postmodernism, and rejecting conformity. Helvetica, do you know? A reflection about what our fonts say about us. Now you might think this is a dry and boring subject (as I did before I saw the film) but it is in fact a And in fact, maybe they don't exist.". Underground brings these stories into the light. I just get a total kick out of it: they are my friends. Typography is really white. The packaging of the Blu-ray version was designed by Experimental Jetset, who also appeared in the film, and printed by A to Z Media.[3]. Interviewees in Helvetica include some of the most illustrious and innovative names in the design world, including Erik Spiekermann, Matthew Carter, Massimo Vignelli, Wim Crouwel, Hermann Zapf, Neville Brody, Stefan Sagmeister, Michael Bierut, David Carson, Paula Scher, Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones, Experimental Jetset, Michael C. Place, Norm, Alfred Hoffmann, Mike Parker, Bruno Steinert, Otmar Hoefer, Leslie Savan, Rick Poynor, Lars Muller, and many more. WebHelvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. Hello??? Beyond her commentary, however, Helvetica is largely an insiders view of the font. that Helvetica is a sort of global monster. Interviewees in Helvetica include some of the most illustrious and innovative names in the design world, including Erik Spiekermann, Matthew Carter, Massimo Vignelli, Wim Crouwel, Hermann Zapf, Neville Brody, Stefan Sagmeister, Michael Bierut, David Carson, Paula Scher, Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones, Experimental Jetset, Michael C. Place, Norm, Alfred Hoffmann, Mike Parker, Bruno Steinert, Otmar Hoefer, Leslie Savan, Rick Poynor, Lars Muller, and many more. Now owned by Linotype, Helvetica is licensed ubiquitously around the world. Helvetica screened this week at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX where it was very well-received. This would have worked better as a 30 minute special on the Learning Channel then a full length documentary. Those decisions you make become expressions of who you are.. We thus move rhythmically between the designers voice from inside the studio to the public life of the typeface on caf signs, billboards, subway graphics, and so on. 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. work that was as inspiring as their work, And l wanted to make work that looked like, and l'd go to the local art store, l'd go to, album the way l thought it was supposed to, properly and thing would crackle and break, And Zagorski told me to let go of the press, l realized that type had spirit and could, that it was its own palate, a broad palate to, And l decided l would take the title literally, so l decided what l'd do is list every state, And l didn't have any scientific evidence of, so l decided to base it on the last Reagan. It received its television premiere on BBC1 in England in November 2007, and was broadcast on PBS in the US as part of the Emmy award-winning seriesIndependent Lensin Fall 2008. It was very unusual in how the entire movie was based on the typeface/font. Inclusion of the font in home computer systems, such as the Apple Macintosh in 1984, only further cemented its ubiquity. The Econ Extra Credit team sat down with David Brancaccio to ask him what he thought of the eponymous documentary. We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly. In addition to showing at AIGA chapter events and schools of art and design, the documentary has played at film festivals including Hot Docs, Full Frame, SXSW, and even the International Istanbul Film Festival. What are you talking about?" Jonathan Hoefler: And it's hard to evaluate it. You know, there it is, and it seems to come from no where. Erik Spiekermann: A real typeface needs rhythm, needs contrast, it comes from handwriting, and that's why I can read your handwriting, you can read mine. dealing with mother in laws is just horrific. Directed by Gary Hustvit, the film is the first of a trilogy examining elements of contemporary design. Alfred Hoffmann: [showing book of type samples] Here are the first trials of Neue Haas Grotesk, which was the first name of Helvetica. but with a new set of theories to support it. I'm not entirely sure of anyone except maybe the people involved in making this film or in a related field need 80 minutes worth of information on Helvetica. 13 minute read. It's just there. Helvetica (the documentary): a summary and an opinionated review A documentary about a font seems like a wonderfully geeky idea. Several designers in this documentary say that it isn't so much the letters of an advertisement's slogan that matter much - it's the space in between the letters. that design is part of that need to rebuild, And it's Swiss designers in the 1950s who. I can't explain it. This is an 80 minute long movie about a font. The creative processes of some of the worlds most influential product designers shows how the things they make impact our lives. You know, there it is, and it just seems to. Is Helvetica the greatest font every designed? No, absolutely not. So, he said, why don't we call it Helve-ti-ca. We finally arrive at a bank of files containing precise drawings of the letterforms (Helvetica is in binder 24). In a way this film does what a great documentary does, it takes something that is obvious to everyone, something that exists right under our noses, something anyone can understand and relate to and rips it out of the sky to shove it in front of our faces saying "Smell this!" Rick Poynor: Type is saying things to us all the time. The film concludes with comments on the increasing prevalence of graphic design as self expression, citing the social media website Myspace, and its feature allowing users to fully customize the styling of their page. Drink Coke, That is a quality they all want to convey. As someone who studies ubiquitous socio going to fit in, you're not going to stand out. Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. I saw this film last night at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the company of hundreds of budding graphic designers, new media specialists, and fans of typography. https://www.freepik.com/blog/helvetica-documentary-typeface 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. And that is about it. l know you got exactly what l was saying. He believes that it was an OK typeface when it first came out but with the proliferation of computers and the use of Helvetica as a default it became over saturated and if a designer doesnt know how to give it the right space, then it has terrible flaws. twenties, early thirties , than at any time in, in terms of style and so on. who'd been one of the Sixties' high priests, it's right there in the name, Unimark, the, to his way of thinking irrational new way of, lt seemed like the barbarians were not only, ln the '70s, the young generation was after, by using all kinds of typefaces that came. Switzerland use the font as its hallmark for example, 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. And that's the, area to me where it gets more interesting. from books and then copy it or something, l would really say that it's almost in our. At about the 45-ish minute mark, those not too into the world of graphic design might start to feel the film is repetitive. Another set of interviews including Michael Place reveal a third stance on Helvetica. . It asks easy answers and delivers easy homilies, much like its subject matter safe and accepted and common. The film toured around the world for screenings in selected venues, such as the IFC Center in New York, the Institute of Contemporary Arts London, the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, and the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco. Type is saying things to us all the time. And I'm sure our handwriting is miles away from Helvetica or anything that would be considered legible, but we can read it, because there's a rhythm to it, there's a contrast to it. 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. Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. Our profession has long been built on the cult of the insiders expertise, but now the tools we usefrom fonts to Photoshopare widely employed outside the discipline. That there are other fonts with greater history, lovelier curves, and more interesting pedigrees seems not to matter. There's nothing ''extramarital'' about that. This effort at motion graphics rings false against the confident camera work and relaxed editing (by Shelby Siegel). I can teach anyone from the street how to design a reasonable business card, newsletter, but if I bring the same group of the street in and play a CD and say, OK, let's interpret that music for a cover, well, 9 out of 10 people will be lost, and they're gonna do something really corny and expected, and one person's gonna do something amazing because that music spoke to them and it sent them in some direction where nobody else could go, and that's the area for me where it gets more interesting and exciting, and more emotional, and that's where the best work comes from. But I don't think it's really quite as simple as that. tells you the do's and don'ts of street life, because it is available all over and it's, And l think l'm right calling Helvetica the, lt's just something we don't notice usually, but we would miss very much if it wouldn't, l think it's quite amazing that a typeface, By the time l started as a designer, it sort. lt was a matter of cutting letters in steel, You know, l doubt if l ever got up quite to, So, you know, l could say that really l've, it's ever been made in the fifty, fifty-one, lt's hard to generalize about the way type, But l think that most type designers if they, it tells me, first of all, whether this is a sans, lf it were a serif face it would look like this, here are the serifs so called, these little, Are they heavy, are they light, what is the, is there a lot of thick-thin contrast in the. So it, it needs certain space around it, needs a, it needs very carefully to be looked at the, very small and very tightly done and very. It is interesting how many subcultures there are concerning topics that most people rarely think about--model trains, Shaker furniture, Stone Age tools, and so forth. | Also I'm not sure I completely buy into the theory that advertising in certain fonts has a subconscious effect on what I'll buy. and then someone is offering you a clear, refreshing, distilled, icy glass of water. What they do is more than just logos and corporate branding - they design the type that we read every day in newspapers and magazines, onscreen and on television. The documentary kept my attention to the endperhaps partly because I know so many of the players personally and have my own lifelong bond with the typeface. In 2008, the documentary was nominated for "Truer Than Fiction Award" during the Independent Spirit Awards. Awards We get some sense that people are conscious users of typography when the camera shows us young urban folk wearing font-covered clothing and accessories. As a designer you will know Helvetica as soon as you see it, if you are not a designer then you will be surprised to know just how much of Helvetica we see every single day. Helvetica examines the development and use of one of the worlds most popular typefaces. l lived in that period. Helvetica: A Documentary, A History, An Anthropology. Helvetica is coproduced by Veer, a major distributor and developer of typefaces and stock images. so l'm never sort of a classical type guy. 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. you know, it's just there. A diatribe (by some) about a font seen as style-killingly ubiquitous. This is surely the best documentary I have seen. obviously. Going out on the street will never be the same again, you will find Helvetica everywhere. . See production, box office & company info. 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. . Hoffmann was the president of the Haas Type Foundry, while Miedinger was a freelance graphic designer who had formerly worked as a Haas salesman and designer. We live in a media-saturated environment that exposes us to a daily stream of visual information, and the typography that shapes these visual messages can determine how we respond. It was by far, the most NOT-boring documentary i've ever seen. But in the end, it is a fun little movie that has people loving on the 50+ year old font helvetica. Both logos work and both logos are timeless. lt's been around for fifty years, coming up. Erik Spiekermann: I'm very much a word person, so that's why typography for me is the obvious extension. Being the geek I am, when I first heard the title, I was there! . Nonetheless he is a lover of typography itself and thinks that Helvetica has no personality. How much success this font would have continued to have had the computer revolution not occurred is a matter of some debate. and descenders and all that kind of thing. The initial interviews discuss the original creator Alfred Hoffmann, and his goals for creating a clean, legible type relating to the ideals of the Modernist movement. In light of that I was interested in this documentary about the most popular typeface designed. It looks at the 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. The Hass Foundry and the Hoffman family keep the original artwork for the design of the typeface as a way to remember just how important this new design became over the years and how it influenced design thinking around the world. In the end Helvetica is not just about Helvetica. Lars M?ller: And I think I'm right calling Helvetica the perfume of the city. Show less. In a million years it would never have occurred to me to do a documentary on a type font. This movie is brilliant. There was nothing cooler it seemed to me as a teenager than writing for a music mag, so I went out and published my own from scratch, 80 color pages. Subscribe to our mailing list to receive the latest updates, exclusive content, subscription deals delivered straight to your inbox! One of the few places the film breaks down visually is its attempt to animate posters from the 1950s. I found it utterly engaging. Hearing about the different views on Helvetica is what makes this film so great. 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. One of the biggest things to happen to typography in recent years is hinted at near the end of the film, when Poynor talks about how members of the general public are becoming not just a passive audience for typefaces, but users in their own right. Massimo Vignelli: You can say, "I love you," in Helvetica. And in turn Stempel was also controlled by. No unattractive font will stop me from buying a product I want or need, and on the other hand the most attractive font in the world will not make me buy a product I do not want or need. External Reviews Any questions? WebHelvetica is a feature-length documentary about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. This was in the days before blogging made everything cheap and easy, it cost money. Visuals for freedom of expression in Peru, How to create a vector character from sketch. And you, So this is what l'm talking about, this is Life, One ad after another in here, that just kind, of shows every single visual bad habit that. It was subsequently broadcast on networks in 15 other countries. Coke. Tobias Frere-Jones: The sort of classical modernist line on how aware a reader should be of a typeface is that they shouldn't be aware of it at all. Because all the letters . I kept wondering as I watched how the film would speak to nondesigners. But there's one you probably see more than any other one, and that's Helvetica. It just makes my words visible. . I like both sides of the argument. and it's just as fresh as it was . Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. Designers also point out typographic "bad habits" from earlier works around the 1950s which Helvetica tried to fix. Any Questions? 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