12.06.08 why helvetica is a good documentary

Posted under: geek mystique, movies

Because it doesn’t try to entertain first and inform second, it does the reverse. Yet the font geeks that are interviewed are fabulously entertaining. Teutons are hilarious.

Because at the end of it I had no fixed idea what my position on the topic was. That’s actually huge.

Because I have never before considered the societal impact of a font, and now I’m actually wrangling with the issue of whether Helvetica deserves its position as king of fonts. I had never considered this topic, and now it keeps me up all night, I see nothing but dancing letters in that middleground between sleep and waking.

And because, deservingly or no, Helvetica really is the king of fonts, it’s effectively changed the way I look at everything.

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6 comments on 'why helvetica is a good documentary'

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  1. Comment by Darius K. on 13.06.08 at 11:07 am

    Yep, I watched Helvetica for the first time back in December. It was the best movie I’d seen in a long time, actually.

  2. Comment by Paolo on 16.06.08 at 10:25 am

    I’ll have to see this, though I highly doubt I’ll ever consider Helvetica to be the ‘king of fonts’. That’s just crazy talk.

  3. Comment by Irving Isler on 17.06.08 at 12:53 am

    I wonder if Khoi Vin was interviewed. He’s the world’s biggest Helvetica nerd and intricately involved with the design of the New York Times web presence.

    He also runs a great blog at http://www.subtraction.com/ which I haven’t tuned into for a while.

    He was even selling “Helvetica” t-shirts for while, if I recall correctly.

  4. Comment by Pluche on 25.06.08 at 6:27 am

    Although I like the Helvetica font, I always thought Universe was the king of fonts. But thanks for the link, having worked in printing and design for a number of years this is quite interesting.

  5. Comment by Kim Pallister on 30.06.08 at 4:23 pm

    I haven’t seen the doc yet (thanks for the pointer, it’s in the queue now), but looked at the credits, and I have one complaint.

    Any typography-related doc that doesn’t see to include Microsoft’s Bill Hill has at the very least missed a good opportunity. Visit MS’s ‘Channel 9′ on MSDN and see the various interviews they’ve done with him. He’ll take you on a hike through the Pacific NW rainforest while telling you the story behind ClearType, the complexity of reading fonts on CRTs, and how man learned to read tens of thousands of years before he ever learned to write!

    http://www.kimpallister.com/2005/11/bill-hill-on-cavemen-and-typography.html

  6. Comment by Kim Pallister on 30.06.08 at 4:24 pm

    More here:
    http://www.kimpallister.com/2005/10/fontblog.html

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