Thoughts on Helvetica: The Motion Picture

So I finally got round to watching Helvetica last night. Although some people I know (friends, family, girlfriend… okay, everyone I know) think that the idea of a feature-length documentary about a typeface is a bit stupid, I absolutely loved it. I feel all tingly and inspired.

Some thoughts/obsrevations:

• Helvetica is even more ubiquitous than I thought.
• Michael C Place (and his cat) are just lovely.
• Paula Scher is a bit of a hypocrite. Judging by the film, she wouldn’t touch Helvetica with yours (blaming it for the Vietnam and Iraq wars), but now she’s selling templates that incorporate it.
• Michael Bierut (my favourite design writer, thanks to his brilliant Seventy-nine short essays on design) should steer clear of caffeine.
• I love that upper-case R more than ever.
• Someone should make a much cheaper, poorly edited film called Arial.
• David Carson looks exactly how I imagined him to look.
• I want a Freitag bag. Now.