grasswire

I am still fascinated by the documentary film Helvetica by Gary Hustwit that I saw yesterday. Yes, it is a documentary film about typography, about one of the most enduring and attractive types ever designed. One of the things that struck me was its pure omnipresence. Helvetica type is literally everywhere, you will find it on garbage trucks, subway signs and corporate identities of multinational corporations. And at the first sight you won’t even notice it is the same type. I for one consider myself to have an eye for obscure details and that kind of stuff but I was stunned. Since lots of shots in the film are from New York, I went through photographs of my this year’s visit to the city and sure, there it was, Helvetica, looking at me from more than a dozen of photographs. Hence the little homage pic.
In any event, the film is really worth seeing, it is well done, runs very smoothly and offers a brilliant interplay pro and contra statements from an interesting mix of interviewers of different generations, various styles and gradations of fame. And it is not just some wish-wash babble, its a bunch of people really contemplating about design.