Tonight I had the pleasure of seeing Gary Hustwit's excellent documentary film about the typeface called Helvetica.
A string of interviews and film sequences were carefully put together and the resulting film should become not only a standard reference for typography but for graphic design more widely.
After the film there was a Q&A session with a panel consisting of Gary Hustwit, the director, Jim Rimmer and Douglas Coupland. This was a very entertaining half hour and it was good to see Douglas, Gary and Jim so enthused about the subject. I gained a new appreciation of Helvetica on it's 50th anniversary and suspect my font habits will be changed forever!
I of course was 'taken' by Leftantler and once again was grateful. I wasn't brave enough in a theatre full of graphic designers to ask my question (Is Helvetica as good for numbers as it is for text?) but the ones that were asked were answered informally and made for good entertainment and a good overall feeling about the evening.
Note to organisers: learn how to manage line-ups - too many people made grumpy by blatant queue jumping and poor crowd control.
The DVD is planned to come out in about 3 months and will quickly be added to our collection. For one thing Gary Hustwit tells us there are lots of extras, which will be very cool. If you get chance to see this film, you're in for a treat.
Technorati Tags: documentary, Gary Hustwit, Helvetica, Jim Rimmer, helveticafilm
