Hel-fucking-vetica

I finally got to see it during the Oslo screening, and I have to say, it’s good. It’s very good.

It features some great interviews, that will have you floored with laughter, and some that will have you reaching for your Moleskine with inspiration. It also shows you how extremely ubiquitous Helvetica is, and how it got to be like that.

It is a bit lacking in certain areas, though. There is no mention of how different weights are drawn, how it transitioned through the different processing- and printing techniques and Arial is only mentioned in passing.

But then, if you look at the movie as a whole, that doesn’t really matter. Those things would have been, though probably interesting to me, completely irrelevant for, say, my grandmother.

The movie, as it turned out, is something that is fun for me to watch, but still something I think non-designers will enjoy. (If only to point and laugh at the strange designers…)

The Q&A

Unfortunately, the Q&A ran a little short, as the screening room was boiling, and most were eager to get some of that fresh air that people have been speaking so fondly about.

But of course, there was some highlights. Huswit mainly talked about the making of the movie, which was completed over a 18 month period. There was also a lot of talk about the soundtrack of the movie, and how the movie was originally to be scored by Sonic Youth.

I would have loved to be able to write ‘Original soundtrack by Sonic Youth’ on the poster, but… In the end, you do what Helvetica wants you to do, and Helvetica rejected Sonic Youth.

Instead, the movie was scored mainly by the indie bands that was on Huswit’s iPod at the time the movie was being made. And though there will not be a soundtrack release, per se, Huswit did say that a soundtrack would be released as an iMix on iTunes, when the DVD is released in october this year.

– Will there be any bonus material on the DVD?

– Definitively. I have a lot of interviews that I didn’t get to use, especially of Erik Spiekermann. I mean, it’s not as if each interview lasted 2 hours, and the five minutes you see in the movie are the only good bits. I had to cut a lot, which was hard, of course; but I’ll try to cram as much as possible onto the DVD.