Documentary Summer: Helvetica
We don’t want to come off as a bunch of nerds when talking about Helvetica, a documentary film by Gary Hustwit. That will be hard though, primarily because most people invision this film as a simple homage to a common typeface that you find on your computer. Don’t judge us! But we insist that you open your mind (and DVD player) up to this documentary. What we found while watching Helvetica was not just history of a font, but a wonderful commentary about typography, graphic design and visual culture. Most people go about their day to day not realizing the importance of something like ‘fonts’, nor do they realize how much thought is put into their use around them. From major corporate logos (American Airlines, Bank of America, The Gap to name a few) to subway signs in NYC, the Helvetica typeface is more of a part of your life than you may think and letting this documentary open your eyes to that is more entertaining than it sounds.
Nerdy? Yes or No? Oh and this is amazing.
About Documentary Summer: As the Summer movie box office breaks record after record (biggest opening weekend, most popcorn shoved in mouths, etc), we can’t help but feel bad for the little guy & the films that are forgotten in the multi-million dollar marketing blitz coming from Hollywood. This why we have started our ‘Documentary Summer’ feature. A hand selected group of A&SB staff members will be doing nothing but sitting on their couches throughout the hot days of the coming months, remote in hand, watching documentaries. We will be creating write-ups for the finest ones (A&SB recommended!).
Related posts:
- Documentary Summer: Confessions Of A Superhero
- Documentary Summer: Word Wars
- Documentary Summer – King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
- Drag Me To Hell
- Movie Monday: Inglourious Basterds
