Helvetica
Starring: Michael C. Place, Paula Scher, Matthew Carter and David Carson
Director: Gary Hustwit
The film: If you're familiar with the phrase 'kerning' and if fonts are your fetish, chances are Helvetica will make you weak at the knees.
It's a razor-sharp documentary on perhaps the world's most-used font, the style of typography you're most likely to see on billboards on the streets of most western cities, or in magazine advertisements. But it's so much more.
Director Gary Hustwit looks at the history of typography and its influence on us. In a way, it's a reflection on man's search for order in a disordered universe. By looking back on the world before helvetica, we see chaos - a clash of styles that made magazine layouts look messy and had street signage pointing every which way.
But two Swiss guys - Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann - in 1957 developed a style that brought order to things. Thin straight lines, and a very clean look changed the way we looked at words - and in their own way turned the world of design upside down. You might not know it, but helvetica is all around you.