Helvetica
by Robin Mitchell
On Tuesday night Vancouver had its “Helvetica” premiere. There was also a screening of Ryan and Boca’s Typographics film.
The director, Gary Hustwit (he’s the blurry one on the lower right-hand corner) was in attendance. It turns out he produced not only “I am Trying to Break Your Heart” (The Wilco documentary) but also “Moog” (the documentary about the moog synthesizer) as well as being a part of SST Records and a vice president of salon.com. Oh, my goodness. Find out more on Gary’s blog.
The film itself was, in my opinion, really great, and quite inspiring. I think it does a good job of explaining what type is to the non-designer, too. My favourite bits were probably Erik Spiekerman’s inspired rant on branding in the pre- and post- International Type Style eras; Paula Scher’s claim that Helvetica is the cause of American Imperialism (she was laughing) and *especially* Massimo Vignelli’s description of the world as a visual disease which designers stuggle to cure (he was not laughing). Oh, and I also loved the cute men at Linotype with their dazzlingly bright ties.
The film was followed by a panel with the director, Jim Rimmer, of Pie Tree Press and Rimmer Type Foundry, and Douglas Coupland. It was really fun, and I enjoyed moderating the discussion up there with the guys. Thanks to the GDC for organizing the event and to VFS marketing for sponsoring the panel.
August 13th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
[...] The post-screening panel that Mark alludes to in his comment was moderated by Digital Design print design instructor Robin Mitchell, and you can read her roundup of the event here. [...]