Helvetica: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit
The long awaited pre-ordered DVD finally arrived on our door step today, and personally I was excited to dedicate a couple hours to watch the movie after the working hours in the office. And since it’s been a while since I watched a good-quality documentary movie, apart from Discovery or NGC, of course, watching this movie has given me a broader perspective on something that I learned already. The film’s quality is truly second to none.
Graduating from UPH, one of the universities in Indonesia with a notable visual communication design major, I took typography very seriously. So serious that it has become one of my most favorite subjects on my second year onward. I believe that good typography is one of the key to output good and outstanding designs. To be honest, that’s what our designers lack of.
Watching the scenes in the movie, and the interviews with some of the world’s most notable designers and how they think about or treat typography, we can see that Indonesian designers still have limited capacities and knowledge on how to produce good typography in design, regularly. I can still see huge billboards or concert posters spread in Jakarta that just doesn’t kern well.
Even without doubt that Helvetica can be named as the world’s most popular typeface, with this movie, I learned that we can still appreciate a typeface even more than just as a personal favorite.
So any designers out there that are still having doubts on whether to see this documentary or not, I’d say go get it. It’s worth the watch. And I still have to schedule myself to watch the extra features…
More info available on the film’s official site.