The director, Gary Hustwit, made his films (Helvetica, Objectified, Urbanized, Workplace, Rams, and others) available for free during the first weeks of the lockdown -- each one for a week. It was nice to see them again.
Helvetica, a documentary
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Re: Helvetica, a documentary
#32Great film. Wish there was something similar about other typefaces that had significance, e.g. Bauhaus/Universa, Futura, Times, or Comic Sans ;)
Re: Helvetica, a documentary
#33I'm hoping the sequel will be about 'Why everyone should love MS Comic Sans'.
Re: Helvetica, a documentary
#34Needs a (2007) in the title. Great film.
Re: Helvetica, a documentary
#35I am a bit of a typesetting geek, but the lady who says Helvetica caused the Vietnam War really opened my eyes to damage caused by such a ubiquitous font. /s
Re: Helvetica, a documentary
#36I haven't watched Helvetica, but the same director also made Objectified which is fascinating look into the industrial design of everyday products. https://www.hustwit.com/objectified
Add Urbanized to that list too, it’s a really great look at how cities and their spaces are designed. He also recently produced Rams which I’ve not yet had a chance to see but I hope is on par with his previous work. And if you enjoy these films you’ll also likely appreciate the Abstract series which originally aired on Netflix.
A bunch of Netflix documentaries are available on YouTube. Search for 'netflix feature' , 'netflix episode', or 'netflix full' to find most of them.
Re: Helvetica, a documentary
#37I enjoyed learning the cultural context from which Helvetica emerged. In particular, I remember one man talking about how in the early 1900s, a company’s letterhead might have a floral font proclaiming The Inimitable Widgets, Gadgets, and Sprongdonacle Corporation of the Empire State. Then Helvetica comes along, and the company’s letterhead becomes Widgets Co. The same clean look mirrored in Mid-Century Modern and th…
That's the optimistic angle; the pessimistic is that Helvetica grew in popularity due to its being nearly the polar opposite of a just-prior-to-mid-century use of Fraktur by a certain european political party. (Helvetia itself gained a fourth national language in 1938, due to comments made by someone who made his trains run on time; the dutch reformed their spelling in 1947 to distance their language from a neighbour…
> Helvetica grew in popularity due to its being nearly the polar opposite of a just-prior-to-mid-century use of Fraktur by a certain european political party.
Helvetica was developed in 1957 in Switzerland. This was a time when pretty much the only text still printed in blackletter typefaces (like Fraktur) were newspaper mastheads. Outside of Germany blackletter was dead long before that time, and even in Germany it died much earlier. The so called "gothic" typefaces (to which Fraktur belongs) were ultimately banned in early 1941 there.
So the success of Helvetica has nothing to do with Fraktur. If you ask me its success is based on its on own inherent qualities, combined with a portion of luck.
Re: Helvetica, a documentary
#38This is a great documentary. I watched it a long time ago, and it felt pretty timeless, just like Helvética itself.
Timeless is just another word for "endlessly boring" which the movie isn't, but Helvetica is by now ;)
Re: Helvetica, a documentary
#39See also: "Behind the Typeface: Cooper Black"
Re: Helvetica, a documentary
#40There's a game called typerider for people interested in typography.