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Paul Young is a townie who graduated from the University of Illinois twice: once with a bachelors in graphic design and then again with a masters in education. Paul has been a foodie all his life (even though he didn't know what a foodie was until recently). He has eaten his way through New York City (eight years) and Milwaukee (two years), but has finally settled down here in Champaign-Urbana (since 1994). When he's not eating, he is either doing graphic design or teaching at Parkland College in order to earn money to buy food. In a former life, Paul was the founder and publisher of The Octopus, a weekly newspaper where he wrote about food every now and then.
When I first saw Gary Hustwit's new documentary Helvetica at American Institute of Graphic Arts' Intent/Content Conference in Nashville, I was skeptical. As a graphic designer, I had an opinion about the subject. I wondered how an 80-minute documentary about a typeface that I've been trying to avoid since the 1980s could at all be interesting. Was I surprised. Hustwit is such a good filmmaker that he can make watching water boil fascinating. But in this film, he didn't have to do too much because the people he chose to interview were so passionate about the topic that they poured their heart out for his camera. What Hustwit ended up with was more than a film about a font. Helvetica is the best film about the graphic design profession ever made (not that there have been that many, or even one).
Helvetica is a Swiss typeface that was developed in 1957 and became, arguably, the most used typeface in the world.
At the height of its popularity in the 1970s and 80s, the font was a favorite of most designers. Ask any designers working today, and they will admit to using the font at least once. Due to its legacy, Helvetica represented clarity, corporate conformity, modernism, and boredom depending on whom you ask. The film Helvetica is an attempt to capture the history and passion surrounding this font from both a cultural and aesthetic point-of-view. Like most documentaries, there are plenty of talking heads. But Hustwit also comments on the interviews with poetic visual interludes that are both ironic and enlightening at the same time.
When I saw this movie again at Parkland College's local premiere, I was more impressed by the structure of the film – the visual interludes, the set-up to the interviews, and the rhythm of the opposing opinions. This is simply a well-made, tight film. Graphic designers will drool over seeing industry heavyweights like Massimo Vignelli, Neville Brody, David Carson, Paula Scher and many others ranting candidly on screen. Priceless scenes of major players letting their guard down and allowing their egos to take charge pepper the film.
Even more impressive is the director's resume. As it turns out, Hustwit was the producer of the Wilco documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart and Moog, about electronic music pioneer Robert Moog. Helvetica was Hustwit's directorial debut.
If you're curious how graphic designers think, or why some people have such passion for fonts, then this movie is a must-see. Only available locally at That's Rentertainment (of course). That's Rentertainment is located as 516 E. John St. in Campustown.
Comments (2)
Monday, December 24, 2007 8:55 PM
Great review. Regarding Hustwit, I recently had the luck of seeing him speak after a screening. It was interesting to hear him talk about Helvetica in relationship to the Wilco documentary. One very interesting nugget he mentioned was that when it came to cutting Helvetica he had the help of an editor or producer (sorry, I can't remember specifically) from HBO's The Wire. I can see how that went a long way towards making what would otherwise be dry content interesting to a broader audience.
Thursday, January 3, 2008 12:27 PM
Just saw this movie a few days ago and thought it was a really nice overview of the passion and obsession that goes into design.
I think its such a great movie if anyone is interested in the profession, or if you want to try to explain the odd behavior of your designer friends. Johnathan Hoeffleur & Tobias Frere Jones, for example, make me seem like the most sane person on earth. They take typographic obsession to a whole different level.
It was very nice to see the younger firms working at the end of the movie. And sense that interest in clean/modern design is resurgent in the design community.
Not sure what it was like to design in the mid-70s to mid 90s but I'm very happy to have missed that era in American design. Though i'm sure that in another 10+ years we'll be back to praising the works of Neville Brody and April Greiman. Thats when I'll take my leave of design to pursue my live long dream of being a fisherman on the east coast.