An oddly compelling look at ‘Helvetica’
Published 3:03 pm Thursday, March 6, 2008
An entire feature film about a typeface. That’s right — not the subject of typeface, but one particular typeface. This is “Helvetica,” a splendid documentary that looks at the world’s most ubiquitous font.
Helvetica is the rounded, non-ornamental typeface that is, almost literally, everywhere you look. It’s the American Airlines logo, it’s the type on your IRS form, it’s the signage on the New York City subway system. It’s the credit on the TV show “Jackass.”
The movie tells us where Helvetica came from, but also what it means. And if you wonder how a typeface could “mean” something, hang on — this movie has a long roster of design wonks just waiting to opine.
Helvetica was developed in Switzerland in the 1950s, and its clean functionality was immediately hailed as the very model of mid-century modernism. It has no romance to it, no doodads hanging from it — just readable letters spaced in a pleasing pattern.
The film begins with some of Helvetica’s boosters, including some superstars, talking about its beauty and its usefulness. But then the doubts creep in.
Some interviewees find Helvetica just a bit oppressive. Even totalitarian, somehow. One dismissive, self-described “typo-maniac” compares using Helvetica to eating at McDonald’s.
One designer, a woman who designed chaotic album covers in the 1970s partly as a reaction against the organized look of modernism, blames Helvetica for the Iraq War.
She’s kidding, but only a little.
There’s something fun about hearing experts talk about a subject you aren’t familiar with, but that they care about deeply. I can’t say that I thought much about Helvetica before this movie, but now it’s firmly in my mind.
Every now and then, director Gary Hustwit includes a montage of signs and logos, accompanied by hypnotic music, to remind us of how Helvetica has landed everywhere in the world. And sure enough, you begin to wonder how this graphic statement has affected our lives.
