It’s weird to think that a film about a typeface could be both engaging and life changing, but Helvetica proves to be just that. Most importantly, you learn that there is a whole industry of people who take Helvetica very seriously.
But the movie does show you how often Helvetica gets used a bunch everywhere. And then it becomes like the little arrow in the FedEx logo and you can’t help but see it everywhere, but mostly in Target.
I’m not one to tout the superiority of Helvetica over any other font, but I do think it’s nice looking. You never realize how important type is as part of graphic design, until you really take the time to notice, and Helvetica (the doc) was one of those things that really made me notice.
I’ve become a bit of a font snob in recent years, but that’s because I think that fonts are super important. Nothing can make a logo (especially) look worse than bad font. Like Dan Gilbert’s open letter to Lebron James that was inexplicably written in Comic Sans. Or every greek restaurant writing in Heruclean. Or every craft store’s need to write everything in Papyrus.
I do think that font is particularly important in design. Is it as important as they seem to think in the wonderful world of Helvetica? Who knows.