Movie Review: Helvetica

Congratulations, you guessed it! It is a movie about the typeface named Helvetica. By movie, I mean a documentary that goes over the history, use, importance, and transcendence of the typeface (don’t call it a font – the old school gets mad). It was 1 hour and 20 minutes of a relatively slow-paced story, and I would only recommend it to the graphic designers, journalists, and die-hard knowledge junkies out there. By the way, the name Helvetica comes from the latin word for Switzerland, which is where the typeface was invented. I suppose the most interesting part of the movie is how it shows all of the places that use Helvetica including: Microsoft, Sears, Target, American Airlines, Staples, Lufthansa, most of the street signs (stop, caution, etc), and the NYC subway system. It’s funny that due to the forced popularity of Times New Roman, we don’t often think of how used Helvetica is…but it’s everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Look at the title of the blog, and at the title’s of the posts. Yup: Helvetica.