Swiss Dots / Veer :: Helvetica Philadelphia Film Premiere
by Juanita Berge, 1 Jun 2007

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about our global visual culture, graphic design and the proliferation of one typeface that permeates them both. The film is an exploration of the creative processes, political choices and aesthetics behind what is commonly regarded as the most widely used type in the western world.

Shot in high-definition in the U.S., Great Britain, Germany Switzerland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, it moves us to take a deeper look at the thousands of words we see every day. It prompts a meaningful dialogue about the way type affects our lives. May 15th, Helvetica made its Philadelphia premiere at the Bossone Auditorium of Drexel University, followed by a Q&A with the director, Gary Hustwit.

Learn more about the film.

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Modern, Versatile, Legible...

Helvetica's significance in the marketplace and our lives is such that The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York celebrated the type's 50th anniversary by acquiring a set of the original lead, making it the first typeface to become a part of the museum's permanent collection. Considered by many to be the official typeface of the 20th century, Helvetica communicates with "simple, well-proportioned letterforms that convey an aesthetic clarity that is at once universal, neutral, and undeniably modern," describes the MoMA provenance. "It has smooth, clean lines, and an unobtrusive geometry that almost suggests it was designed not to stand out." says Finlo Rohrer in a BBC News Magazine article.

In 1957, the Haas Type Foundry set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that could compete with the typeface Akzidenz Grotesk in the Swiss market. Borne of the idealism of post-war Europe and the reigning penchant for all things Swiss, it was taken up by the early modernists of the time as something very subversive and very revolutionary. Massimo Vignelli and Wim Crouwell wax eloquently on the subject of Helvetica throughout the film. Within four years, the typeface was in the early beginnings of its ultimate infiltration.

Helvetica represents a safe choice for businesses

In the middle of this wave of popularity for Swiss design, and aided by advertising agencies selling this new design style to their clients, Helvetica rapidly appeared in corporate logos, signage for transportation systems, fine arts prints, and a variety other uses worldwide. It proved so popular, especially among U.S. advertising agencies, that it became the default typeface for any 1960s company wanting to project a dynamic, modern image. "When people choose Helvetica they want to fit in and look normal. They use Helvetica because they want to be a member of the efficiency club. They want to be a member of modernism," says typographer Neville Brody. By the 1980s, the typeface was omnipresent, and we see scene after compelling scene in the movie showing just how ubiquitous Helvetica has become. By the time the film is over, you realize that you probably see Helvetica a thousand times a day without ever realizing it. Think American Apparel, Evian, Intel, Nestle, American Airlines, Energizer Batteries, Greyhound Lines, Lufthansa, National Car Rental, Toyota, The Gap, Hoover, Panasonic, Tupperware, The Internal Revenue, the EPA, and Sesame Street. The list of brands that use the type would fill this page. But, not everyone is a Helvetica lover.

When you type 'I hate Helvetica' into Google, as suggested by Finlo Rohrer, the first two pages are packed solidly with sites designed by people who really do hate it. Rages, rants, odes, paeans & harangues go on and on. As director Gary Hustwit observes, "There's a stark line between modernists and post-modernists in the film. In fact you can't talk about the font without talking about the context – modernism versus postmodernism. Logical, rational, clear design versus the emotional and subjective." Post-modernists have labeled Helvetica bland, unadventurous and un-ambitious - a vehicle for social conformity. "The more you see it, the more familiar and predictable, then ultimately boring, it becomes," says Erik Spiekermann in the film. So something that grew out of revolutionary idealism has, ultimately, become routine. "It's air. It's just there. You have to breathe so you have to use Helvetica," Spiekermann continues.

"I thought I was fighting some kind of battle with modernism, which seemed such a dull way to interpret the world. Modernism, from being a socialist/utopian-based movement had become the opposite, the mainstream, in with the capitalists... Of course I appreciate its role in design history and the drawing that went into the actual letterforms, but there is so much energy, culture and excitement represented through letterforms it is pretty much a typeface I would never use," says one interviewee on www.barnbrook.net. "A phrase that a few of my art teachers used to say occasionally... was 'when in doubt use Helvetica.' It's such a lifeless way of looking at typography," he continued.

"Why is it that you can walk out of your door in any city in this country and find it? Everywhere? Is it just intrinsically good or more legible than other typefaces? Or was it marketed more effectively when it was originally introduced?" Hustwit asks. "In all the cities we shot in, it was never an issue of finding Helvetica. We simply couldn't avoid it. The goal then became the most interesting usage." We get plenty of opinions about the reasons for its popularity. Hustwit talked to designers who were working at the time of Helvetica's introduction, those who grew up with Helvetica, those who use Helvetica religiously and those who spearheaded the backlash against its ubiquity. Interviewees in the film encompass some of the most pioneering and illustrious names in the design world, including (beside those mentioned above), Michael Bierut, David Carson, Matthew Carter, Experimental Jetset, Tobias Frere-Jones, Otmar Hoefer, Jonathan Hoefler, Alfred Hoffman, Lars Muller, Norm, Mike Parker, Michael C. Place, Rick Poynor, Leslie Savan, Paula Sher, Bruno Steinert, Hermann Zapf and more.

"Helvetica is not neutral. You can't NOT communicate. Everything is a communication," says David Carson in the film. So, the idea is that Helvetica's initial design principle – or at least use – was that it be unobtrusive, that it let the content speak, that it be almost subliminal, lead to its saturation so that it did, indeed, become familiar - familiar to the point of invisibility. This familiarity lead to the contempt of post-modernists, who by the late 1980s and into the 90s, were so rabidly opposed to anything Helvetica-like (read Arial, Univers) that it lead to statements like...

It's the typeface you always dismiss first.

The post-modernists of the graphic design community are anything but silent about their view of the typeface. Blog-sites are overrun with clever denunciations of Helvetica.

"Not that Helvetica isn't a very-well drawn and beautiful typeface, but just because it is used everywhere doesn't mean it should be." POSTED BY: Dan Mall | Jun 16, 2005 01:42 PM on the Typographica blog page.

"In spite of its weaknesses, and you can see there are many, it is used everywhere by everyone for everything, when other typefaces, equally available, could do those jobs so much better. It's something of a thoughtless default, so you could also say that in addition to the neutral Swiss associations it carries, it now carries an association of mindlessness, emptiness, clone-y 80's generic blandness. You've heard the expression, "To not make a choice, is to make a choice"? Helvetica is to not make a choice. Helvetica is to do what is safe, to settle for something not really appropriate but generally accepted. Helvetica is to not care about typography. It's the hospital gown of typefaces." crossgrove 19 April, 2006 - 3:55pm in typophile.com.

And this final limerick that connotes the general consensus:

A creative young woman called Monica
Was designing a book of erotica
But the book didn't sell,
At least not too well,
For she'd insisted on using Helvetica

– Nigel May 3, 2007 12:33 AM on Veer's Helvetica love/hate contest

I felt like there was a band named Helvetica, and I made a documentary about them.

Hustwit's film is a novel idea for a very commonplace aspect of modern life. "The politics of typography crystallized for me," with a CNN experience in the early 90s. One of his own font designs was used on the network to illustrate the word 'Welfare.' "I thought, 'Hold on a minute! Who made that decision?' that 'Welfare' was written out in a huge ominous-looking font of mine for a million people to see. Why didn't they choose some clean, optimistic typeface? Maybe we all would have thought that welfare was a great thing, and we'd want to help out more. That got me thinking about the subtle politics behind the use of fonts," and that the font style itself always conveys meaning. Thus the seed of an idea formed and he began looking around him. "Helvetica was the film I wanted to see two years ago, but it wasn't around. So I had to make it," Hustwit explains. "It's an art film about urban spaces. It's a series of profiles of amazing designers. It's an introduction to typography. I try to get deeper into the underlying reasons for its (Helvetica's) success, and we get into the strategies and aesthetics behind the use of type by the designers in the film." "Street scenes, urban spaces, words and music. That was the film to me." That's how Hustwit conceived the film and that's how it reads. Like a music video for the songs Hustwit uses in the film, Helvetica trips along at a lively clip, interspersed with especially entertaining interviews (some of them howlingly funny) with his subject typographers and designers. It's definitely worth a look, whether you're into type or not. A good film is a good film.

It aired here in Philadelphia to a packed audience peopled mostly by graphic designers. I'd say the second largest group in attendance were filmmakers. With a capacity crowd, organizers were turning people away. In fact the film has been airing to sold-out audiences internationally all Spring. Helvetica will continue to make the rounds at film festivals and special events the rest of the summer. Its theatrical release is planned for the end of summer, followed by its television premiere the end of '07.

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