Helvetica: The Movie (review)
Yesternight, the hottest ticket in town wasn’t on Broadway, but rather at the New School where the big wigs of the design community came out in support of the documentary by Gary Hustwit, Helvetica. With a queue that stretched for half a block, and every seat filled, this was no joke. And we were all there to see how this little typeface from Switzerland became the phenomenon (epidemic?) that it is.
Helvetica is brilliant. A cheeky-yet-serious look at the most famous typeface in the past 50 years and how its use is so widespread and ubiquitous it has become the type to rule all others. I didn’t expect to laugh as much as I did, and never knew that the famous names in graphic design were such comedians. Stefan Sagmeister and Michael Beirut were two who left us all in stitches. If you are at all interested in the history and practice of graphic design and typography, check out Helvetica when it tours the US this Spring and Summer. You might even enjoy it if you know nothing about design at all. Hey, what do I know about global warming, right?
Afterward, a panel discussion erupted on stage and audience members got the change to pry at Massimo Vignelli, Tobias Frere-Jones, Jonathan Hoefler, Jakob Trollbäck, and of course Gary Hustwit. Good people. (side note: Tobias Frere-Jones may in fact be the only person who has a more eccentric hyphenated last name than my own. Take that, Thea Hoffman-Nisson!)
Vignelli, Frere-Jones, Hoefler, Trollbäck, and Hustwit
And then the obligatory wine & cheese where I had a moment to meet the lovely-and-talented Debbie Millman, of Design Matters fame. Good people. All in all, a great way to spend a Friday night.
Later, I headed up to Harlem to hang with Rogoff in his ‘hood. We ended up at one of his local bars which played a delightful mix of late 90s hip-hop, so there was a sense of nostalgia at work.
I mentioned to Mike that I had just been to see the film Helvetica, and he asked a profound question: What is the most famous example of Helvetica? I had never thought of that and strangely, there is no most-famous example. Helvetica is so ubiquitous that no one can claim to ‘own’ it. This was my response which prompted Mike’s next question: give me an example of it. I looked immediately over his shoulder and pointed to a simple printed sign.
If you can find it in a bar in Harlem, it’s universal.
