Helvetica, the Robin Hood of fonts

Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica is a documentary about typography.

Please don’t leave.

The film revolves around the life of the Swiss born typeface, Helvetica.

While 80 minutes may seem strenuous for a film about a font, Helvetica somehow squeezes an abundance of interesting content from such a narrow topic.

From the typeface’s birth at the Haas Foundry in Muchenstein, Switzerland in 1957 (50 years since the typefaces conception) to its current every day use and heavily-debated connotations, the film Helvetica is as versatile as the font itself.

Helvetica appeals to those outside of the world of graphic design and typography in that the subject matter is highly visible inside and outside of the film, in addition to having a population of passionate opinions and arguments possessed by those engrossed in the culture.

Typographers appear to be an odd bunch. Concerning this revolutionary font, the main debate coming from graphic and type designers is between modernists and postmodernists. It’s difficult to imagine that people are even capable of some of the esoteric opinions on typeface expressed in this documentary.

Typographers and graphic designers either have extremely high praise for Helvetica — declaring it the be-all end-all of typefaces — detest Helvetica, or they acknowledge the font’s use and influence but choose to use it sparingly. A majority of the interviews have a stark opinion as to what exactly Helvetica communicates and why it is used in the way it is.

The opinions presented in the documentary — obligatory talking head interviews — are proven wordlessly by the vignettes spliced throughout the film which showcase Helvetica’s universality, accompanied by an appropriate soundtrack featuring The Album Leaf, Caribou and Sam Prekop, which gives us a sense that the font is building in the narrative and the world within the documentary.

Designers felt as though there was a need to reconstruct and present things in a smoother, more democratic manner after the Second World War.

Signs which are merely indicators and notes of conduct for street life suddenly become exhibitions of art, which lends itself to both sides of the font argument. You begin to understand why Helvetica is so omnipresent in our lives.

Helvetica is ubiquitous in everyday life and apparently was born of the social responsibility felt after the Second World War. Designers felt as though there was a need to reconstruct and present things in a smoother, more democratic manner after the war. When Helvetica emerged it was assigned as a presentation of legibility and rationality.

A comic moment comes in Michael Bierut’s critique of a Coca-Cola advertisement in Life magazine in 1953, shortly after the introduction of the typeface: “It’s the real thing. Period. Coke. Period. In Helvetica. Period. Any questions? Of course not.”

Lively, eloquent arguments and opinions are given by all of the interviewees in Helvetica, and valid points are presented as to why each notorious typographer or graphic designer feels the way they do about the font. But regardless of where you as the viewer end up siding, of this debate one thing is certain — you will see Helvetica everywhere.