In May I wrote a post about the documentary film Helvetica by Gary Hustwit, and last night I finally was able to see it. I had great expectations, not because it was a film on Helvetica, but because it was a film on type. I wasn’t disappointed. Gary Hustwit did a great job of portraying the love/hate relationship people have with the font as well as giving some history of type in graphic design. The film was filled with some great one liners like this one:

“I’m a typomaniac…an incurable but modern disease” – Erik Spiekerman.

That brought some great laughs from the audience (I’m sure) filled with mostly graphic designers. Regardless of whether you are a graphic designer, everyone is becoming aware of the fonts around them. I get crafted emails in Comic Sans, Garamond or Courier, the font that they think represents them. Neville Brody talks about the use of type in advertising the same way, “…the way the message is dressed is going to define our reaction to that message…if the message is written in Helvetica – (you know) it is going to be clean, that you are going to fit in – you’re not going to standout…”

Douglas Coupland made a joke after the film that he associates Helvetica with over the counter drugs since his father was a physician and received samples from all the pharmaceutical companies – all labels written in Helvetica. In the film, designer Paula Scher associates it to the Vietnam War and jokingly says it started the Iraqi War. Love it or hate it Helvetica is all around us and as Rick Poynor says in the film “…that’s type…casting it’s secret spell”.

Official Website, Helvetic, A documentary film by Gary Hustwit