Normally I wouldn’t comment on something so boring, but gee-whiz. It’s on the Netflix “Watch Instantly” list, so you kind of have to see it. It’s like a movie you watch in high school when you have a substitute, and you find it mildly interesting, but you’d never admit that to your classmates. Oh, and it’s Helvetica’s 50th birthday.
Everything you’ve ever thought about Helvetica is expressed, often quite well. The viewer is left with a new clarity about what happened in the 60s: the pendulum inevitably swung from an antiquated hand-made aesthetic to a crisp, Swiss look grounded by the liberal use of Helvetica black. What transpired next is a bit more fuzzy: the pendulum got stuck. A new generation of designers rallied against the ubiquitous font, but it was the era of “postmodernism.” Mirroring the era’s fine art, designers went off in all directions, a trend that continues today. Meanwhile, corporate design stuck with the bland Helvetica look, and the two sides are eternally deadlocked today.
In the film, Helvetica is frequently (and aptly) compared to air. In certain contexts, air could conceivably be interesting (makeup of the atmosphere, organism interaction, etc.) But peoples’ impressions of it really cannot be. This is the film’s problem: Helvetica’s hidden complexity is interesting (to a typophile), but it’s glossed over so the movie can be publicly accessible. Only the public doesn’t care about fonts.
Should type be expressive? Can Helvetica be expressive? And is compelling, Helvetica-based design interesting by virtue of its style, which is itself bound to pass? Interesting questions all. Sometimes required viewing is dry, and boring material is sometimes required.
Helvetica: the official movie site