HelveticaOct.6

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Helvetica. Produced and directed by Gary Hustwit.

By Julie Mason (julie.mason@parker.com), Parker Hannifin Corporation

Your friends just might not get it. “Why,” they might ask, looking at you more than a bit dubiously, “are you going to see a movie about a font?” And then, as though it would somehow be more excusable during the week, “On a Saturday??”

While it is true that the idea of a feature-length film starring a typeface is a bit unusual, Helvetica is not just any typeface — for fifty years, it has been the defining visual feature of scores of corporations, governments, and organizations around the world. Today already, says director Gary Hustwit, you have probably seen it several times as it “told you which subway platform you needed, or tried to sell you investment services or vacation getaways in the ads in your morning paper.”

Shot on location throughout the United States and Europe, this beautifully crafted high-definition film highlights Helvetica's impact on urban spaces. The film also features a delightful array of interviews with some of the most recognized names in the world of design. Regardless of whether they love or hate it, the designers give the typeface a lot of credit: it is either most perfect sans-serif typeface possible or the most boring typeface in the world; it either has a calming and unifying effect or it is a cause of both the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

The Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque presented Helvetica last month to an audience of several hundred typophiles, ranging from art students to retirees to our group of technical writers. After the showing, Cleveland native Michael Bierut, an award-winning graphic designer and former president of AIGA, gave a brief talk on his comical interview in Helvetica, the making of the film, and his former work with design great Massimo Vignelli.

You haven’'t missed your chance to celebrate the 50th birthday of the world-famous typeface: Helvetica will return to Cleveland for an encore screening on October 6 at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. You can visit www.helveticafilm.com to find more worldwide showings, and to pre-order the DVD ($20), which will be released November 6.

About the Typeface (from www.helveticafilm.com)

“Helvetica was developed by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein, Switzerland. In the late 1950s, the European design world saw a revival of older sans-serif typefaces such as the German face Akzidenz Grotesk. Haas' director Hoffmann commissioned Miedinger, a former employee and freelance designer, to draw an updated sans-serif typeface to add to their line. The result was called Neue Haas Grotesk, but its name was later changed to Helvetica, derived from Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland, when Haas' German parent companies Stempel and Linotype began marketing the font internationally in 1961.

“Introduced amidst a wave of popularity of Swiss design, and fueled by advertising agencies selling this new design style to their clients, Helvetica quickly appeared in corporate logos, signage for transportation systems, fine art prints, and myriad other uses worldwide. Inclusion of the font in home computer systems such as the Apple Macintosh in 1984 only further cemented its ubiquity.”