Helvetica, Top of the Fonts.
By Fred.
For me, one of the fascinating joys of travel is seeing what’s interesting to different peoples about culture. Generally, and stupidly, I don’t think of Western Europen media at a great divide from the US, but then I pick up the International Herald Tribune and there’s an article celebrating the 50th anniversary of a typeface for goodness sake (The IHT is owned, of course, by the New York Times, where I could rarely imagine such frivolous writing). Helvetica is at once the most famous font of the modern age, and one of the most dismissed, ignored, and revilled. It’s so common that though I think of myself as a middlebrow type hobbiest, I had no idea it was introduced as late as the 50s, which would mean when I first worked with it professionally it was less than 20 years old.
Read the article, see the movie, use the type. We do.
(Thanks to Richard Rutter for the great photograph of the great Helvetica documentary poster.)
April 4th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
I’ve been looking forward to this movie for a while.
Tried to see it at the SXSW premiere, and it was completely full; the recent AIGA screening here in NY sold out, too.
There’s a lot of design and type nerds out there, and not just in the big cities. Bet this will be a hit on small screens and Netflix for years to come…
April 4th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
Documentary aside, I have always loved Helvetica. It makes my heart throb.
…Guess that classifies me as a nerd.
April 7th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
I would rather see a movie like this in a theatre — rather than as a Netflix rental.
Just started an Eventful Demand for a Helvetica film screening in San Diego:
http://eventful.com/demand/D0-001-000170498-0
You can start one in your city too if you want a screening to happen there.