Helvetica, Gary Hustwit (director), 2007

I don’t find the film to be promotional, in fact, even though its full of advertisements, its very focused on
deconstructiong the advertisements, which is not what the ads are designed to have done to them. I
thought it was refreshingly anti-promotional, that is, it suggests that its important and meaningful to
consider the message conveyed in typefaces. In doing so it makes you more conscious of what ads are
doing or saying to you, and they start to become strategies or examples to you rather than only
advertisements that subliminally affect you and your behavior.

The primary audience would seem to be academics, including undergrads, and designers or people
interested in design. It’s not too technical (I almost wish it was slightly more technical and a primer on
typography) and fits a wide audience.

It’s not just relevance to the course because it talks about typeface, the sort of strategy and analysis
present in the movie is useful for judging all types of art, especially things in the business world, which is
the focus of this course. Some of the things I’m interested in, like the history of moments effecting the
evolution of typeface are not as immidiately relavant. Anyway I think the film promotes a conscious and
analytic mindset that we can always use in graphic design. I think the film could do a better job pointing
out that there are different Helvetica fonts within the Helvetica typeface, bold or light or italic Helvetica
works differently than regular.

Type carries meaning, whether you are aware of how you perceive it or not. I think that’s part of why
typeography does so much work, because it relies on connotations or cultural assumptions we all feel,
generally tacitly or unconsciously. That type affects one’s emotions and behavior is only the surface, its
important because it affects you whether you stop to think about it or not.

I’m interested in how humanism, modernism, postmodern, and other such movements are behind the
history of the evolution of typefaces. I’ve looked some at these movements from a literary perspective,
but not from a visual arts perspective. The movie hints at it, but its not really in the scope of the movie
to make things very obvious.

I do think that the “neutralism” of Helvetica is in an important way impossible. The connotation of
“neutral” itself is a carried meaning, not to mention authoritative, fair, ubiquitous, functional, etc. I
don’t think any typeface can be a crystal goblet that does not contribute meaning to the language it
expresses. Instead the strength of Helvetica is that its versatile in being appropriate for a huge amount
of uses and contexts that are useful today.