My favorite documentary of 2007 (which I haven't had a chance to write about yet) is Gary Hustwit's "Helvetica," a look at a ubiquitous typeface. It's the kind of movie that helps you to see the world around you anew, freshly attuned to all the fonts in your world. Me, I'm a Helvetica guy. I hate fonts that call attention to themselves, and Helvetica is so clean and strong and elegant you can do almost anything with it just by varying sizes, colors, weights, spacing and placement. Our good friend Larry Adylette, the superlative movie and music and pop culture blogger formerly known as The Shamus (and, before that, That Little Round-Headed Boy), has a few words on Helvetica (and "Helvetica") over at his new blog, Welcome to L.A. -- which is also the title of Alan Rudolph's funny-peculiar 1976 debut feature, starring Keith Carradine, Sally Kellerman, Harvey Keitel, Sissy Spacek, Lauren Hutton, Geraldine Chaplin, Viveca Lindfors and Richard Baskin. (A parenthetical time-out to say: "Hello, Larry!," as they used to remark on NBC for a very short time in 1979-80 after McLean Stevenson left "M*A*S*H," thus providing Garry Shandling with a great network-meeting joke in an early episode of "The Larry Sanders Show.") Larry writes:
Just like film bloggers who parse every frame of "No Country For Old Men," these font fanatics have obsessed about every curve and dimension of Helvetica. To them, Helvetica is either a perfect, easily readable form of mass communication or something akin to Anton Chigurh with a coin and an air-tank gun. They are an argumentative, often hilarious bunch...I have no idea what he's talking about.
But that's not really the reason for this post. It's about an entirely different (serif) font, Trajan, which as Kirby Ferguson of Goodie Bag details in the above movie, has become the movie font. "Trajan is the movie font," he says -- and then goes on to show you so many examples your head will spin. In the end, though, like me, he's a Helvetica guy. Look at those end credits. Not Trajan. Helvetica. I'll write more about "Helvetica" later, because I'm fascinated with it (the font and the movie) and I already want to see it a third time.
(tip: Ali Arikan)
P.S. Karsten (in comments below) offers an explanation for the film-font phenomenon with a link to this animated murder mystery, "Etched in Stone." (link opens new browser tab/window)
I've always been partial to Calibri.
That is a very funny video, thanks a lot for the link.
But you should most definitely have this short crime mystery animation film in mind also: Etched in Stone. I have a hunch that Kirby Ferguson must've seen it...
This is just hilarious, end of story. I knew I'd seen Trajan around a bunch, but that video is simply wonderful.
That...was awesome. And worth potentially being late for my appointment.
I must admit a preference for serifs: a nice Palatino, for example, or Bookman. For a long time I was prejudiced against san-serifs due to a couple of graphic designer friends telling me about how hard they are to read in block text. Then I realized they were nuts.
Hello, Jeeeem! I was wondering if you'd read something into my remarks. Strictly affection, nothing else. I had no idea about Trajan, but I haven't seen a great movie poster since Amsel stopped drawing them. Anyway, thanks for the kind words, as always.
Bill,
Traditionally, sans-serif fonts were used for headlines and serif fonts were used for blocks of text, as the serifs serve to guide your eyes across the page. This is still true of print media. On a computer screen, sans-serif fonts are generally easier to read.
Of course, individual results may vary.
Liz
Glad you posted this, and it's time a film like "Helvetica" was made.
People often don't understand the intimacy of fonts, or the profound history behind them.
Studying font theory is a strange and wonderful facet of anthropology, semiotics, yada yada yada... but that all goes away when you drop ("pie") a case of old fashioned lead type.
Larry: Nobody enjoys indulging in a full-on geek-out than me, whether it's about a shot or a sequence or a font or a plant or a song...
I'd like to know what font they use in the titles of Frat Pack and Farrelly Bros movies. The one that's usually in red and caps, also used for the Scary Movie spinoffs.
This is pitch perfect. And like you jim, I too am a Helvetica man. The poster I designed for my first feature uses Helvetica Nue Black. Check it out.
www.myspace.com/commonthefilm
Question for anyone who's seen the movie: is the word Helvetica pronounced correctly throughout?
Correct: hel-vay-shuh.
Incorrect: hel-vet-ick-uh.
I just saw a brief clip on the film's website where a talking head pronounced it incorrectly. Or has the mispronunciation become so common that it's now the accepted pronunciation for the font?
How about Futura, the "2001: A Space Odyssey" font? All caps in the credits, bold lowercase on the posters. That's a good font.
There's a region in Switzerland pronounced hel-vay-shuh but it's spelled Helvetia. As for the font, I don't know why you wouldn't pronounce the "c" since it comes between two vowels.
The official name of Switzerland is Confoederatio Helvetica, and in both Hochdeutsch and Swiss German (and Latin), as is customary, the operative word is pronounced as written. Since the typeface was developed by a Swiss designer, it makes sense for Helvetica to be pronounced in the same manner.
I think I love Courier New almost as much as my wife, but that probably has more to do with its utility for creating ASCII-Art, as it is admittedly a rather plain and occasionally ugly font.