I watched the Helvetica movie a few weeks back and I wanted to say, friends, it changed my world.
For those of you haven’t heard about Helvetica, which I suspect covers most of you (however, I suspect more of you have heard/seen this movie than the general public, because I think you all are just that cook. at any rate,) it’s a documentary that covers design, typography, modernism, post-modernism, and contemporary trends in art/design, all vis a vis the now-52-year-old typeface “Helvetica” which had a profound impact on the last half-century of visual culture.
For real. 90 minutes of a movie about a font face.
And you think this might be boring or get old after a while, but somehow it doesn’t. And not only does it not get old, it soaks into your perceptions for a long time afterwords.
The thing about helvetica, perhaps its largest strength, is that it blends into the background, that it’s value-neutral, and that it is all over the freakin' place. Seriously. The side effect of this is that we don’t end up “seeing” it very much, and the movie shines a light on Helvetica and suddenly I’ve found it possible to see it everywhere. Everywhere.
And if nothing else, I think its sort of cool to be able to see differences and depths in this thing that sort of exists to be neutral. So that’s cool.
And. That’s about it.
Stop looking at me like that.