Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

TheDocHierarchy The year 2007 marked the 50th anniversary of the Helvetica typeface. To most people, this little nugget of information (#fact if you will) means very little. Begin to show them however just how ubiquitous and ever-present Helvetica is in their everyday lives and you'll have their interest. Hustwit certainly got mine very early on.From street signs to Nike advertising campaigns, from littering notices to shop billboards, Helvetica is omnipresent. We must see thousands of words and phrases a day that use the Helvetica typeface, yet far from wonder why the typeface is always identical, we don't even recognise they are in fact the same typeface. Hustwit's 'Helvetica' delves into this gap, one that didn't exist for the viewer before the film started, but quickly engages our curiosity: why is it used so uniformly? why does it look so...clear? what does that say about us? where did it come from? who creates this stuff? It is a courageous director who opens that can of worms, but Hustwit takes to it with relish.Taking us back to Switzerland in the 1950s, the field of typography is laid out in full by a panoply of talking heads ranging from modern-day typographers, to graphic designers, to mere (and I use that reluctantly) artists. Perhaps fittingly, the issue of Helvetica's omnipresence remains the centre of attention for all those interviewed, how can they explain away the veritable phenomenon it has become? The range of responses elicited conveys a certain chasm in the field, the 'neutrality' that arises as the font's attraction is as much a joy and example of sheer artistry to one artist as it is depressing and mere bourgeois subterfuge to the next. The discussions of the aesthetic of the font, and of others' (failed) attempts to move beyond it, do risk at times moving beyond the film's appeal to the layman, but are forgiven for the passion they betray of the filmmaker and his subjects.As a font, Helvetica is more than simply an inspiration for the corporations that depend on its neutrality and aesthetic to promote their goods. It is an instrument that both lures figures into the design industry for want of its use and pushes those opposed to its capitalist connotations into usurping its ideals and creating their own fonts.Thus far, few have been successful and Helvetica reigns supreme on the street; have we reached the 'end of history' for typography? Helvetica may be its perfect form.Concluding Thought: Nothing to do with typography, but who knew 'Helvetia' in Latin was Switzerland? (#fact)

Derek Deskins At its core Helvetica is a documentary about the creation and widespread use of the typeface of the same name. If that sounds boring to you, well guess what, it often is.The film, directed by Gary Hustwit, begins with the birth of the typeface. It was created in 1957 by the Swiss with the hope to create a "perfect" sans-serif typeface. As a side note, a serif is apparently the little "feet" type accents that are on letters of certain typefaces, for example Times New Roman is a serif typeface. The film speaks with several type designers, a profession that I was unaware of, including the designer of Helvetica. Once the viewer has been given an adequate background on the typeface itself, the film begins to change. It wanders away from the typeface itself and becomes a documentary about graphic design. Graphic designers express both their love and hatred for the typeface as well as its effects on the larger world of design, becoming more of a film about modernism and post-modernism as it applies to this world.Throughout the film, the director goes out into the world to shoot different signs and postings that utilize Helvetica. At the beginning, this is intriguing, often surprising the viewer with just how often this single typeface is used. However, as the director employs this technique more and more often, to the point where it seems built into the transitions, it becomes annoying. By the end, I felt like I was just being shown the same images in a film that no longer was truly just about the typeface itself.If I were a graphic designer I may have found this film more intriguing and interesting, but sadly, this is not the case. It is shot well and the interviews seem to give a balanced opinion on the use of the typeface, but as a film, it is stretched thin, feeling overlong at its lean 80 minutes.

Todd Bradley I was surprised that I liked this movie so much. I turned it on just to keep me company while I washed dishes and folded laundry. But then as I learned about the unusual history of the Helvetica typeface, I started to pay attention. And then the interviews with the eccentric designers and artists really pulled me into the film, and I had to watch the rest."Helvetica" tells the whole history of the font. I enjoyed learned what fonts had come before, what problems they were trying to solve by making this one, and so on. And then, as the history comes up to the modern day, the film examines the haters, the lovers, and some of the people who try to do things with it that the typographers never intended.As someone who's not into typefaces or visual design, I never imagined a typeface could say so much.

David Bogosian A documentary about a typeface? For those of us who take interest in such things, of course! But if you're one of those who never bothers to change the default font in your Word documents from Times New Roman, then I'd recommend you stay away from this film altogether.Unfortunately, even those who are keenly aware of typefaces may find this movie disappointing. My main criticisms:1. It spends long sequences showing us examples of Helvetica signage used in various contexts. Some are elegant and clean, many are torn old posters, ragged pieces of letters peeling off walls, etc. These sequences were artistic and okay at first, but maybe after the fourth one, you find yourself reaching for the fast-forward.2. It spends the vast majority of its time in interviews with various designers discussing their impressions of the font's "meaning" or its impact in the history of design. This should have been perhaps 30% of the film, instead it is closer to 80%.3. It doesn't spend enough time looking at the technical details of the font. There are occasional off-hand references by some of the interview subjects to various features of certain letters, but even those segments are not illustrated. I would have loved to see a side-by-side contrast between Helvetica and similar sans-serif fonts used earlier, or perhaps others created since then. In one sequence, we catch a glimpse of one of the original large-scale drawings for one of the letters; I would have enjoyed seeing more of those, larger on the screen, and with explanation of how the various parts work in relation to one another.With its current affective emphasis, this would have been an acceptable 45-min. documentary, but at an hour and a half, it is far longer than it needs to be. I hoped to walk away with an understanding of what made Helvetica uniquely popular, but that was never clearly shown in any way.