Sketchblog

Yes. A movie about a typeface. It is not a movie about a font. A font is the digital file that contains information about the font. A typeface is the design of a specific alphabet, in all of it’s weights and styles. Anyway, I am aware that going to see a movie about a typeface is a horribly nerdy thing to do. I suppose there are worse things. The film features interviews from “rock star” designers giving their various opinions for and against Helvetica. Some designers find Helvetica to be the peak of everything good and pure about modernism, while others consider it to be just another mechanism in the military-industrial complex or maybe, less harshly, just boring. I identify with the love-hate relationship that designers have with Helvetica. Sometimes I hate it, sometimes I love it, but I suppose it just depends on the project. You are reading this blog post in Helvetica because it is the least offensive, and most legible of all of the web fonts. I mean fuck Arial. (can you tell the difference?)

This is actually the first feature film I have seen about graphic design, and so far it’s my favorite so far. Maybe it will inspire more.

Helvetica: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit – Official Site
Erik Spiekermann clip from the movie on YouTube
Helvetica vs. Arial Test.
Helvetica Wiki

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