Design
Helvetica
At their best, documentaries focus on some tiny overlooked corner of life and enlarge it to fill the world. By bridging the micro and macro, a great documentary helps the world make sense. This great documentary focuses on one typographic font, Helvetica. It traces the history of how Helvetica was invented, how it became a default font on most computers, how that popularity catapulted it towards ubiquity in our environment, and what it means that we can find it everywhere, even though we aren't aware of it. Along the way, we are educated in what fonts do, and how they work. Using interviews with the most renowned typographers living today, this film illuminates the world of fonts -- a world we rely on more and more -- and the universe of typography and design. Like Helvetica itself, this portrait is trim, radically visible, smooth, and refreshingly modern. It is nearly perfect.
-- KK
Helvetica
Gary Hustwit
2007, 80 min.
$20, DVD
Rent from Netflix
Available from Amazon
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