Customer Reviews

Helvetica

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The historical significance of the typeface as well as the on-going evolution of typography make this a must see for anyone interested in typography and graphic design, but also a fine entertainment for film enthusiasts. Compelling interviews with notable professionals are informative, witty and often hilarious. Visuals run the gamut from elegance to true grit. Kudos to Gary Hustwit and his crew for this living history before it is not longer possible.

I'm a working graphic designer.

I'm an art graduate. As a child, I enjoyed to look at fonts for hours - a Letraset catalogue(titled in big Helvetica letters) from the 80s was one of my (most) prized possessions.

When I first heard about this movie I was thrilled. Now that I saw it, I can say it was worth my time. The movie is smart, witty, and a pleasure to behold - an endless stream of layouts. And valuable insights, commentaries and history. Oh yes, the film is also inspirational - it makes you think about good design. It makes you desire good design, whatever that may mean today.

My favourite quote from the movie:
"The life of a designer is a life of fighting--fight against the ugliness, just like a doctor fights against disease. For us visual disease is what we have around and what we try to do is try to cure it somehow, you know, with design." Thanks Mr. Vignelli for putting things into perspective.

Given Helvetica's importance in design history, this is not a movie you should miss.

I first saw Helvetica(the font) as a child, I first acknowledged it as a high school design student, now it's one of my 3 most used fonts at work. I know it's flaws and shortcomings, and I've come to rely on it's many strengths and virtues. It's versatile, strong and straightforward. It's one you can trust. It's also got a softer side, when you come to know her better. It's an old friend of mine, that now is starring in it's own movie! Now that's something to celebrate.

Cheers, Helvetica! Cheers, old friend!

If so, this is the film for you. I was lucky enough to see it at the annual conference of the Society for Environmental Graphic Design - and loved it! It's accessible not only to designers but also to me - the biology major in the room. Gotta love a detailed history of something that you see every day - but may not notice.

The other day I went up to one of the people at the information desk at the Sears -- oops! make that the Willis -- Tower in Chicago very close to where I work and asked them if they knew the name of the font that was used in displaying the building name. I was reasonably confident that it was Albertus (a very distinctive font that most people will known from a slightly modified version used in the classic TV series THE PRISONER). They didn't know, but my point is that today even someone completely unschooled in design like myself can somewhat conversant on the subject. It is all due to computers. One of the results of the personal computer revolution is that it has made people conscious of fonts in a way that people never were before. Oh, people worried about whether they could get alternatives to courier on their old electric typewriters. But for the most part people did not think much about it in their own lives. For the most part font design has been dominated by serif fonts. A 'serif' is the little design at the end of a stroke on a character. Sans-serif is any typeface that does not contain the serif on the character. An easy way to tell which a font is (though it will by no means hold up in all cases), is to look at a capital 'I' and lowercase 'L'. If you have Word 2007 it is exceptionally easy to compare the various fonts by highlighting both characters and scrolling through your options. If you look up Helvetica in Office, you won't find it. Microsoft opted for a cheap version of Helvetica that we all know as Arial. It is the primary Windows sans-serif font, just as Times New Roman is the primary serif font.

I have some problems with the documentary because it leaves so much out. For instance, for all its importance in advertising and in public design, Helvetica and other sans-serif fonts play little role elsewhere. I did a test sampling of ten different books off my bookshelf. All ten were printed in serif fonts. The entire issue of font for reading is almost completely unaddressed.

Despite the lapses, this is a very interesting film, which addresses both the reasons for the success of Helvetica and similar sans-serif fonts (btw, they constantly show public signs with the assumption that they are Helvetica, when in fact many of them are derivative fonts -- the film actually is about the Helvetica family rather than Helvetica narrowly conceived) and the reasons for many rejecting it. For instance, one woman not completely tongue-in-cheek associates Helvetica with the wagers of the Vietnamese War and the invasion of Iraq.

I love documentaries like this, that focus narrowly on a subject that you might otherwise not give a great deal of thought about. You will definitely not take for granted the public signs and advertisements that you see around you.

For the 50th anniversary of its creation, director Gary Hustwit takes us on a tour of the history, ideology, culture, controversy, and success of the ubiquitous Helvetica font. Created in 1957 by Eduard Hoffman and Max Miedinger of Haas Typefoundry, taking its name from the Latin word for Switzerland (Helvetia), the land of its conception, Helvetica is the quintessential modern typeface. It turned out to be just what everyone was looking for and exploded onto graphic design in the 1960s. Now it's everywhere: billboards, subways, logos, signage, consumer products, IRS tax forms, and the default on the computer I'm using now.

Not everyone is a fan of Helvetica, or perhaps I should say that not everyone is a fan of its ubiquity. Through interviews with 3 generations of graphic designers and type designers, "Helvetica" presents both its fans and detractors, what makes it is a truly great font, what makes it controversial, and the reasons it persists. Helvetica is the font that rescued graphic design from the kitschy chaos of the 1950s. A product of post-war idealism, Helvetica was perfect for facilitating communication in an intelligible, egalitarian way, on an international scale. It is described as: modern, clear, rational, accessible, transparent, and neutral.

By the 1970s, Helvetica had earned its share of critics. What had been revolutionary to old-school modernists seemed fascistic, boring, overused, and conformist to Baby Boomers. In rebellion against Helvetica, graphic designers sought more subjective, distinctive styles of type including illustrated, hand-drawn, and grunge typefaces. By the late 1990s, Gen Xers and their European counterparts were embracing Helvetica again, though perhaps with different goals and rationale. The story of Helvetica is no less than that of how we communicate graphically. In this Internet age, when type design is everpresent, "Helvetica" helped me understand what I'm looking at. Subtitles are available in English and German.

I wholey recommend this movie to anyone who is interested in art, design, consumer culture, or in FONTS. This film is a seriously great documentary that covers all aspects of typeface. Very comprehensive and honest, Helvetica kept me 100% interested throughout the film. And in case you think documentaries are boring, don't worry, this one is hilarious - way funnier than rhinos doing it.
I offer my full recommendation, whatever that may mean to you.

A fascinating take on a topic in which most people might think they would find little interest. As one Rotten Tomatoes reviewer wrote: "Helvetica is one of those rare films in which the exploration of a specific topic leads to expanding horizons of perception."

Very true.

This is a movie about the impact of the 1957 introduction of the type face Helvetica on graphic design. From its early invasion of corporate and government signage, print advertising, and logos through the inevitable (and disastrous) revolt against conformity, and into the current era of quiet ubiquity. The people who talk in the movie are nearly all graphic designers, and they speak to what the font means to them in both positive and negative ways. But, what spoke most to me was the interspersion of comment free examples of Helvetica seen in the signs and clothing of the urban environment; there is an indisputable flood and it opened my eyes to how dominant and common the font is.

What's missing for me, as a software engineer is the impact of Helvetica (and its close cousins like Geneva) on digital typography. Helvetica is one of 35 fonts which are standard to every Postscript implementation. This has been a primary mover in creating this ubiquity. And yet, this was not brought up. Surely, some designer interview could have been dropped in exchange for someone from Adobe. And what do the limitations of onscreen typography do to this cool and notoriously perfect font. And if this movie were updated today, would they mention how Helvetica is the standard font on the iPhone? But this is all about what this movie isn't.

I enjoyed the movie for what it was, my wife, who doesn't care about fonts, hated it. If you don't love type, you are likely to dislike this movie. If you love type, there is much to learn and like about this film.

Some of the more trivial things I learned from this documentary are that graphic designers don't wear ties, they do wear eyeglasses that sometimes are distracting, and they drink coffee out of simple plain white cups--not mugs.

The typeface Helvetica was created to carry the message of Modernism--simple, clear, without content of its own. Its job is get across whatever message is in the text. It can be used to tell you which is the men's room or why you should drink Coke.

Helvetica (a made-up word meant to connote "the Swiss typeface") was especially popular in Europe and in America in the 1960s and has never gone away.

But in the 1970s, because the use of Helvetica became universal in American advertising, a reaction set in--A.B.H., anything but Helvetica. Helvetica was for one American designer the typeface "behind the Vietnam War." (Judging by this documentary, American artists and designers reacted against Helvetica much more than Europeans did. Perhaps because, for Europeans after World War II, Modernism--which Helvetica represented--was already a reaction against the Romanticism in the Nazi ideology.)

A couple of the less trivial things I learned from the documentary are that few graphic designers seem to be women and that cultural stereotypes aren't dead. A German designer in the documentary said Helvetica typifies the "Swiss ideology" because every letter is like every other letter. He was a pretentious snob, but interesting to listen to. I learned more about him than about design. It reminds me of the old joke: "That's enough about me. Let's hear about you--what do YOU think about me?"

So the war between Helvetica and "grunge" typefaces became for some designers (especially the ones who worked on counterculture magazines and music art) a war between clarity vs. ideology, rationalism vs. humanism, socialism vs. capitalism.

That's why, one designer says, governmental agencies like the IRS use Helvetica. There's "a balance of push-pull" that makes you feel problems will go away. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. I wonder if there's such a thing as a graphic psychologist who could explain why the weight of the letters or the ratio of white space to black has the effect it does on people.

I don't want to make you think this film is overly serious. It's just that it has a lot of interesting ideas expressed by the people who use typefaces professionally. Most of the graphic designers interviewed love Helvetica and are effusive and articulate in telling why they love it so much.

I really liked the English designer whose professional dream is to do the design for an entire airline, from logo to crew uniforms to signs on the fuel trucks. His wife let him design their wedding invitations (the worst job in graphic design, according to him, because of all the people you have to please), but she wouldn't let him include an acknowledgment to Helvetica in their Order of Service for the wedding.

Absolutely riveting for graphic designers! This is a must-see for any designer! A terrific lesson on the history of modern type. It's presented with a quirky take on how Helvetica was born in the 60s, rejected in the 90s and then loved again in present day. Outstanding filmmaking and shot with an eye for design (much like One Hour Photo). A great soundtrack and superb image quality make this one DVD to keep!