Shortly after Typo Berlin, ‘Helvetica the Movie‘ by Gary Hustwit was screened (with Q&A afterwards) at the UDK Berlin.

Huswitt originally produced music videos and his intitial idea for this movie was conceived whilst walking around New York with his headphones on; visualising a film about type and the city.

However, through his first interviews with Massimo Vignelli, he quickly realised that he potentially had access to an enormous amount of knowledge and talent, which nobody had yet documented on film. He subsequently also realised that Helvetica was about to celebrate its 50th Birthday; his vision for the film narrowed to focus on the proliferation of this typeface; its history, and those designers who in some way or other felt strongly about it.

What results is a very interesting film, weaving together, city shots, street signage, municpal signage, shop frontings, advertising hoardings, from all over the world and the works, thoughts and anecdotes of various designers who created much of the typographic landscape we were being shown.

He originally interviewed over 100 designers each talking on average for 2hrs! This has been whittled down to a handful of designers from New York, Zurich, Berlin and London talking for a few minutes. There are some great interviews, most notably from Wim Crouwel, Experimental Jetset, Lars Müller, who perhaps gave the most interesting thoughts. There were also interesting anecdotes from Paula Scher and Michael Bierut.

If you didn’t manage to see it in Berlin this time round, or are unable to see it London (dates are not yet set for screenings), Hustwitt mentions that a dvd should be out in the autumn with enough added extras and further interviews for any ‘type maniac’ (a Spiekermann expression) to get their fix.