Helvetica – A Documentary About a Typeface

Helvetica by director Gary Hustwit is a documentary film about the eponymous Helvetica typeface and typography and visual design in general.

Using Helvetica’s simple elegance, usefulness, and ubiquity as both a starting point and a recurring theme, this documentary film features interviews with many design and typography legends and luminaries such as Jonathan Hoefler, Erik Spiekermann, or Tobias Frere-Jones.

In those interviews, those typographers share their opinions on what made Helvetica so wildly successful, why it is the iconic typeface of the modern and post-modern age, and what might be done to remain innovative in a world of highly similar typefaces that often just seem to be mere copies of Helvetica.

The film is the first part of the director’s Design Trilogy.