True Films 3.0 - Kevin Kelly

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.
By Gary Hustwit
2007, 80 min.
Available from Amazon
Rent from Netflix
The type face Helvetica set in Helvetica in old fashioned lead type
and printed in ink (top left). In contrast to home-made lettering
on a fence (top right). A typographer points out the ubiquity of
Helvetica on a street in London. It’s on every other building. The
art of typography begins on a computer screen (left).
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