Font Freak

Design fans can get their freak on by watching Helvetica, but everyone else--especially three-year-olds--will probably be bored.

The best parts of Helvetica are the interviews with the original designers, the old uber modernist European guys. I also enjoyed the interviews with some of the baby boomers. The documentary really drags during it's ad naseum shots of Helvetica all around us. Only once is this done in a clever way.

What's missing from this documentary? Motion graphics and animation that bring the typeface concepts to life. It's fine to have some old dude reminisce about how they picked the name Helvetica. It was cool when one of the old dudes referred to his computer screen when describing the anatomy of a new font. But it's a real shame that the filmmakers didn't take advantage of today's inexpensive motion graphics technology to illustrate the concepts at work. A documentary is a movie, for Pete's sake, not a brochure.