Helvetica

This is surely the best documentary I have seen. I use several metrics in this.

A film is almost without exception a story. A documentary is usually presumed to be a found story, an existing one that the filmmaker merely exposes. We come to the thing expecting some coherent story, already formed, the problem having two threads: Can we trust the filmmaker? Does the story resonate? Often a solid position in one mitigates the other.

But real life — at least the life I know — has no stories that are blunt. Real stories, the ones that weave themselves through the world, are rich, only somewhat visible, immensely intriguing and often educational. I expect to be puzzled. If there are "two sides," I immediately mistrust the teller, because true movement is simply itself.

This film should be celebrated simply because it decides to present a story in its unformed state. We hear from designers young and old, clever and not. Some are geniuses and some see the genius of design and we have no idea which is which. They report profoundly different views on a typeface. Lest we think this is an irrelevant subject, the observations on the typeface are bridged by examples to show how thoroughly it has saturated.

So we are left with the same form as "Ten Tiny Love Stories," perspectives that surround the notion and instead of pulling out the answer, illuminated the mystery. The simple fact is that this is a powerful, mysterious force that makes us do things. The comparison of font design and romance is not misplaced: both somehow relate to the bricks of stories we use in constructing a life — or for some of us a fort to protect from life.

So I can recommend this to you. I recommend seeing it with your partner, your real partner. And then sit with them quietly and reflect on the nature of clarity and knowing.

I can criticize this though. There is much that could easily have been said that wasn't.

Its usually presumed that spoken language is quite old and written language a relatively modern technology compromised to make it persist. In this context, type design is merely a matter of style, a choice.

But there is evidence that spoken language predates modern humans and evolved over time through collaborative toolmaking, most particularly weaving and stonechipping. Acts of hands. Shapes -- physical form, with symmetries. Spoken language in this history is itself an adaptation, and written language perhaps closer to the core of how we think. In this history, shapes matter. The process of creating form in story — all manner of form — matters. The story is how the story is shaped.

We bump against this intuitively. It was why the Macintosh was a giant step forward in the 80's, because storytellers could for the first time be storyshapers (publishers, in the corporate lexicon). And why Microsoft is such an evil. And why type design elements have become so deeply viral. The original features come from carved inscriptions and independently from monks' pens.

Anyway, from that Mac beginning came a focus on type as never before. And several design journals that struggled with the issues spoken about in this film. Pulling them out of print to put on screen should carry some more weight than we have here. I am hoping that some truly talented filmmaker is inspired by this.

The most edgy but still intelligent design and font design journal from the last decades is "Emigre," which you should peruse if this movie intrigues you. Also you might want to check out Darius, who was behind the first designed font.

My typeface is Vendetta.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.