Before seeing the documentary I wasn’t really familiar with Helvetica. I would be able to recognize the name as a font but I did not realize how widely it was used and the extreme emotions it brings out in designers.
There seems to be two camps. The first feel that Helvetica is the perfect font and that there is no way to improve upon it. It is clean and modern and has a perfect balance of space between and inside of the characters. While they may not use it all the time, they appreciate it and have it on a pedestal as the end-all-be-all of typeface. From what I could tell, more people with this view seemed to believe that the typeface is meant to aid in reading and getting the message across without distracting from the content itself. This seems similar to the idea that video editing is meant to allow the content to flow without distracting and in itself should not necessarily be beautiful.
The second camp despises Helvetica. It doesn’t seem, however that they despise it visually as much as they despise the way that it is overused, how it has been used, and what they believe it has come to represent. In most cases this has to do with capitalism and corporate America. It seems to be the safe play for large companies trying to be accepted by the mainstream. It is for those that want to fit in.
The way designers view Helvetica seem to be less about typeface and design as it is about individuality and originality. Regardless of what they personally believe about the font, there seemed to be a theme that all designers have come to terms with the fact that Helvetica will always be “just there, like air.”