Salam, Saya perlu buat ulasan mengenai methodology yang digunakan dalam membuat dokumentari tentang rancangan Helvetica

ini. Seperti apa kah method yang digunakan untuk mengkaji tentang Helvetica. Ada ceritanya dalam movie di utube bertajuk : Forever Helvetica- A mainstream documentary on the worlds most popular font attests to the ubiquity of graphic design Saya sebenarnya kena guna ayat sendiri untuk ulas. Tapi tak pandai sgt. Ini adalah dibawah subjek research documentation and background studies.\ Terima kasih ya. the movie consisted of interviewing person after person about their opinion on the font, with significant dead time between interviews where they played slow music and showed signs. They missed many opportunities to make this an interesting documentary. For example, one of the designers mentioned briefly how he got started in the industry years ago. He mentioned doing some sort of metal work (or something like that) to manufacture physical plates for the fonts. I think it would have been fascinating to show how fonts used to be designed back when Helvetica originated, pre-computers. Another missed opportunity they actually went to the building where Helvetica was created, took us to the basement, and pulled a folder out of a file which contained some of the original artwork. But thennothing. They didnt show the contents of the folder or explain what exactly goes into a design. Instead, they just cut to another boring interview. Then they mentioned the concept of a font foundry, but failed to explain what that is. I really wanted to know. I want the history of the design, as well as the implementation process and how that has evolved over the years with computerization. Insteadjust a bunch of boring interviews. I get it. Sven LOVES the font, Ivan HATES the font. Sally LOVES the font, Barb HATES the font. Yawn. Its a documentary. Show the processthe toolsall aspects of font design and implementation. Instead, all we get is boring interviews.
March 18th, 2008 at 10:06 am

Jrg Says:

Im a little surprised We showed the Helvetica Movie here in Hamburg at the Hamburg Design Days, the cinema was sold out, and the people were excited. So, sorry youre wrong. Its a designer movie, not a technical one.
March 21st, 2008 at 7:01 am

Down10 Says: It sounds like you expected to see a shop film about type design, not a documentary about this particular typeface named Helvetica. Youre perfectly welcome to go research the history of the typeface and the tools used to build it without bashing the movie for failing to be an educational guide for the non-designer layman. Its sort of like accusing The Inconvenient Truth of being boring and irrelevant because it didnt delve into the history of climate research and what tools were used to measure it. And even then, boring is quite subjective dismissal. How was it boring? Did you recognize the (notable) graphic designers that were interviewed, and why their opinion might in relation to the topic might be interesting? Its a documentary. Show the processthe toolsall aspects of font design and implementation. It appears that youve completely missed the point of Helvetica, and perhaps what a film documentary actually is. Maybe you should have learned more about the field of type design before seeing this movie. Dont blame a movie that wasnt intended to explain the production aspects of typography on your personal lack of prior knowledge.

About the Film Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which celebrated its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. The film is an exploration of urban spaces in major cities and the type that inhabits them, and a fluid discussion with renowned designers about their work, the creative process, and the choices and aesthetics behind their use of type. Helvetica encompasses the worlds of design, advertising, psychology, and communication, and invites us to take a second look at the thousands of words we see every day. The film was shot in high-definition on location in the United States, England, the Netherlands, Germany,

Switzerland, France and Belgium. Interviewees in Helvetica include some of the most illustrious and innovative names in the design world, including Erik Spiekermann, Matthew Carter, Massimo Vignelli, Wim Crouwel, Hermann Zapf, Neville Brody, Stefan Sagmeister, Michael Bierut, David Carson, Paula Scher, Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones, Experimental Jetset, Michael C. Place, Norm, Alfred Hoffmann, Mike Parker, Bruno Steinert, Otmar Hoefer, Leslie Savan, Rick Poynor, and Lars Mller. Helvetica had its World Premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2007. The film subsequently toured film festivals, special events, and art house cinemas worldwide, playing in over 300 cities in 40 countries. It received its television premiere on BBC1 in November 2007, and will be broadcast on PBS as part of the Emmy award-winning series Independent Lens in fall 2008. The film was nominated for a 2008 Independent Spirit Award in the "Truer Than Fiction" category, and was shortlisted for the Design Museum London's "Designs of the Year" Award. An excerpt of the film was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

About the Typeface Helvetica was developed by Max Miedinger with Edard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Mnchenstein, Switzerland. In the late 1950s, the European design world saw a revival of older sans-serif typefaces such as the German face Akzidenz Grotesk. Haas' director Hoffmann commissioned Miedinger, a former employee and freelance designer, to draw an updated sans-serif typeface to add to their line. The result was called Neue Haas Grotesk, but its name was later changed to Helvetica, derived from Helvetia, the Latin name for Switzerland, when Haas' German parent companies Stempel and Linotype began marketing the font internationally in 1961. Introduced amidst a wave of popularity of Swiss design, and fueled by advertising agencies selling this new design style to their clients, Helvetica quickly appeared in corporate logos, signage for transportation systems, fine art prints, and myriad other uses worldwide. Inclusion of the font in home computer systems such as the Apple Macintosh in 1984 only further cemented its ubiquity.

Could first-time American director Gary Hustwit be the architect of a New Banal documentary movement? With Helvetica he produces a gleefully engaging investigation into the worlds most ubiquitous typeface, uncovering a minor shit storm in the world of graphic design as well as broadening the cinematic and analytical potential of the documentary form in the process. Tracing the roots of the Helvetica (ne Neue Haas Grotesk) font back to a small foundry in Mnchenstein, Switzerland in the 1950s, the film charts its rise as a staple of corporate logos, warning signs and any form of communication that requires a direct, pithy and functional mode of expression. It's almost absurd that something so quotidian could provoke such controversy but, as we soon discover, the graphic design world is very much split over its cultural connotations and artistic worth, allying it as easily with fascism as socialism, progress as decline,

superficiality as substance. One highlight is an interview with German typographer and designer Erik Spiekermann who goes so far as to compare the uniform appearance of the font to Nazi soldiers marching in line. In fact, every one of Hustwit's shrewdly selected interviewees has extremely strong opinions on the subject, and there doesnt seem to be any kind of generational or creative link as to why a designer will love or loathe the font; some see it as a design masterpiece which will never be bettered, others see it as emblemic of a creative drought and serves as nothing more than an easy design solution for lazy creatives. Artfully photographed, sharply edited and propelled by a gorgeous ambient rock soundtrack, its a film which owes more in philosophy perhaps more than style to the measured docu-realism of Nicholas Philibert than the bombast of Michael Moore and has obviously been constructed with its utilitarian subject close to heart. Don't let the mundane subject matter put you off. This is one of the wittiest, most diligently researched, slyly intelligent and quietly captivating documentaries of the year. What do the brands MUJI, AGFA, SAAB, IBM, Oral B, BMW, Staples, Kawasaki and Panasonic have in common? Their logos are all designed in the Helvetica typeface, which is the subject of a new documentary that explores how typography and graphic design affect visual culture and our lives. Chances are that you yourself will have used Helvetica to create a document, or that you have come across it when reading signs and billboards in cities around the world.

The Helvetica typeface is one of the most ubiquitous design classics of our time. And to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary this year, Gary Huswit has produced and directed a well-made film, with a sublime soundtrack, about its genesis. Full of examples of where, how and by whom Helvetica has been used, the film contains insightful interviews with many leading contemporary designers and typographers. While Helvetica is variably at the top or at the bottom of designers favourite typeface lists, Huswits documentary shows that the history of Helvetica and the ways in which it has been embraced or rejected is bound up with more important things than the conflicting tastes of designers. The film couches this history in the bigger picture of the fate of the modernist project. As with Helvetica, many people despise modernism, but are unable to find anything lasting to replace it with. Certainly within typography, nothing has matched the Helvetica projects success and longevity. The development and exponential growth of Helvetica was very much a product of modernism. Developed by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Mnchenstein, Switzerland, Helvetica had all the qualities necessary at the time to help rejuvenate attitudes to and uses of design. Though it was originally called Neue Hass Grotesk, in 1960 the font was renamed the more internationally-friendly, Helvetica - the Latin name for Switzerland.

Helvetica captured the modernist preference for using clarity and simplicity to suggest greater ideas. The fact that the typeface is clean-cut and simple means that it can be used as a neutral platform in a wide variety of settings it is the particular context and content of the messages that convey their meaning. The optimism with which Helvetica was created and taken up worldwide proved it had all the right qualities for rejuvenating attitudes to and uses of design. For example, advertising at the time suffered from a lack of clarity, with swirling and emotive typography making overwhelming claims for consumer products. Advertisers commonly used stereotypical allAmerican family role models that felt out of touch and were unable to bring to life ideas that resonated with peoples lived experiences. What was needed was something that could cut through all of the fake-ringing imagery, and deliver on its promise. The film Helvetica shows us how conformist attitudes in the 1950s were challenged by those who argued that designers needed to let the content speak for itself, rather than the message being driven by, and imposed through, the design.

Take for example the rebranding of one of the worlds best-known brands: Coca Cola. Its marketing success in the 1950s can be explained by how the company embraced the new, modernist approach to advertising. It conveyed a simple, but confident and resounding message: Coke. Its the real thing. The Helvetica typeface provided the vehicle for this simple message, leaving the content to do all the talking. This was a stark contrast to how other brands marketed themselves at the time. As a design tool, Helvetica gave designers a much needed addition to their palette: neutrality. It took boldness to propose to a client that a logo should do more with less. But those who

championed this idea had much success. In the 1980s, however, the interest in Helvetica began to wane. It was shunned especially by those who adopted a postmodern design aesthetic, which turned imagery and typography itself into the objects of desire. Then the focus was on developing brands, but without having to dwell on what the product in question did or was useful for. For a brief moment, the designer became hero again, transforming mere things into fashionable and desirable brands by the sheer creativity of his or her style and aesthetic. Many designers who found themselves at the centre of attention ended up losing the plot altogether. A famous example of this was when David Carson, a leading proponent of deconstructive typography, produced an infamous edition of his ber trendy design magazine Raygun. When a commissioned piece on the musician Bryan Ferry came in, Carson thought it so dull that he set the copy in Dingbats a typeface used to display shapes and symbols thus making the article totally unreadable! Eventually, when the public could no longer stomach the often illegible work of designers like Carson, clear typefaces like Helvetica, as the film tells us, once more found new followers. Yet those who turn towards designs like the Helvetica font today do so for very different reasons than did its proponents back in the 1960s. Today, even though our access to technologies and high levels of design expertise are unprecedented, design is very differently appreciated, and arguably less able to impact on the world around us. With the notable exceptions of the Mini (and its subsequent resurrection), the Dyson hoover and the iPod, it is hard to think of many designer items that are instantly recognisable and ubiquitous. Miedinger was a true pioneer of a new aesthetic, and there are few designers of such calibre around today. The endurance of Helvetica is understandable, but our newfound appreciation of such sleek, down-scaled design is, as the film Helvetica conveys, bound up with a sense of nostalgia, exposing a lack of refreshing creativity in the here and now. Miedingers project is inspiring because he broke the moulds of his time. So while we should admire Helveticas success, todays designers, rather than merely recycling old designs, should take their cue from their predecessors who dared to re-invent their discipline rather than merely repeating what had come before.

Forever Helvetica
A mainstream documentary on the worlds most popular font attests to the ubiquity of graphic design.

By Ellen Lupton Posted June 20, 2007 2 comments I first became aware of typographythe very idea of itwhen I was in the eighth grade. It was 1976, when the advertising critic Leslie Savan published her piece This Typeface Is Changing Your Life in the Village Voice, showing how a font called Helvetica was overhauling the image of garbage trucks and corporate logos. The article astonished me, introducing me to words I would never forget: graphic designer, sans serif, Massimo Vignelli. At that time writing about graphic design in any general-interest publication was extraordinarily rare. Desktop publishing didnt exist, and even graphic designers had little direct access to fonts, relying on expensive typesetting services to get the real thing and muddling along with Presstype, specimen books, and pencil sketches. Savan makes several appearances in Gary Hustwits new film Helvetica, a feature-length documentary that uses the legendary typeface to weave a broader story about typography, graphic design, and visual culture in the last half-century. Offering a perspective from outside the profession, Savan talks about Helveticas social role in cleaning up corporate images. Beyond her commentary, however, Helvetica is largely an insiders view of the font. (Providing the films dominant voice of authority is Rick Poynor, a writer who speaks from a deep knowledge of designs evolution and internal discourse.) Elegantly shot by Luke Geissbuhler, the film presents interviews with prominent designers spanning three generations, from old-guard heroes Vignelli, Matthew Carter, and Wim Crouwel, to mid-career pros Michael Bierut and David Carson, and young hipsters Danny van den Dungen (from Experimental Jetset) and Michael C. Place (formerly with the Designers Republic). Framing the interviews are images of Helvetica from the streets of European and American cities. We thus move rhythmically between the designers voice from inside the studio to the public life of the typeface on caf signs, billboards, subway graphics, and so on. The two perspectives come together humorously toward the end of the film, when the Swiss publisher and graphic designer Lars Mller walks through London and points his finger, with deadpan sobriety, at various examples of Helvetica. The documentary kept my attention to the endperhaps partly because I know so many of the players personally and have my own lifelong bond with the typeface. Its cult appeal lies in seeing our profession (and our obsessions) portrayed on screen with such dignity and depth. I kept wondering as I watched how the film would speak to nondesigners. Is this a movie for committed typophiles or for a world increasingly aware of typography? Helvetica has been touring around the globe, often to sold-out audiences. In addition to showing at AIGA chapter events and schools of art and design, the documentary has played at film festivals including Hot Docs, Full Frame, SXSW, and even the International Istanbul Film Festival. Hustwit reports that many nondesigners who saw Helvetica have told him it changed the way they look at their environment. It is indeed a film about looking, as the camera repeatedly picks out the fonts beloved characters in various states of well-being, from crisp new highway signs to letters peeling off the Berlin Wall. The subject is at once esoteric and universal.

Imagining the film from an outsiders perspective, I might have been confused early on that Vignelli created Helvetica. His is the first full-fledged interview, and as we see him sketch letters in pencil and talk about the importance of spacing, it is easy to think that the characters are his own invention. (We think typography is black and white, he says. Typography is really white. It is the space between the blacks that really makes it.) Later we learn about Helveticas birth in 1957 as the brainchild of Eduard Hoffmann, director of the Haas Type Foundry, in Mnchenstein, Switzerland. Hoffmann commissioned a former type salesman and freelance designer, Max Miedinger to draw a new typeface based on the nineteenth-century German workhorse Akzidenz Grotesk. Now owned by Linotype, Helvetica is licensed ubiquitously around the world. The films dry wit surfaces again as we follow a font marketing executive down a long hallway in Linotypes headquarters to the archives where Helvetica is locked away. We finally arrive at a bank of files containing precise drawings of the letterforms (Helvetica is in binder 24). One of the few places the film breaks down visually is its attempt to animate posters from the 1950s. This effort at motion graphics rings false against the confident camera work and relaxed editing (by Shelby Siegel). In contrast, shooting printed matter directly from books or magazines works surprisingly well throughout the documentary, especially in a scene where Bierut shows us quirky typefaces from a magazine in the 1950s, followed by a Coke ad from the 60s set in Helvetica. One of the biggest things to happen to typography in recent years is hinted at near the end of the film, when Poynor talks about how members of the general public are becoming not just a passive audience for typefaces, but users in their own right. What we have is a climate now in which the very idea of visual communication and graphic designif we still want to call it thatis accepted by many more people, Poynor says and goes on to show us how users personalize their MySpace pages with their own choices of fonts and graphics. Those decisions you make become expressions of who you are. Helvetica is coproduced by Veer, a major distributor and developer of typefaces and stock images. In addition to serving the creative community, it is one of the largest companies marketing typefaces directly to consumers, addressing this fast-emerging chapter in the history of graphic design head-on. Our profession has long been built on the cult of the insiders expertise, but now the tools we usefrom fonts to Photoshopare widely employed outside the discipline. Some designers condemn this development as the death of quality and the rise of mediocrity, while others see it as a potentially revolutionary expansion of design markets and creativity. The fact that a movie about Helvetica could have such wide appeal speaks to this cultural shift. Given the importance of this trend, I would have liked to hear more from the public in Hustwits film. Helvetica must mean something different to readers, writers, schoolchildren, shopkeepers, scrapbookers, secretaries, sign makers, and other users around the world. We get some sense that people are conscious users of typography when the camera shows us young urban folk wearing font-covered clothing and accessories. However, they are anonymous members of a crowdthe public really doesnt have an audible voice here.

In the end Helvetica is not just about Helvetica. Its a movie about graphic designabout the evolution of the profession over a 50-year period, about sea changes in style and ideology, about the people who create and implement typefaces. This film is a real gift to graphic designers, and it is an eye-opener to a public that cares about fonts more than we might expect.