If I had two things I wish I could be, the first would be a musician, the second a graphic designer. The wannabe designer in me really wanted to see Helvetica when I saw it in the iTunes store. Helvetica is a documentary about typography, specifically the emergence of Helvetica 50 years ago and it’s origins in modernist design to the rebellion against it to it’s reemergence as a core design element today. The movie touches on the power of type and typeface to communicate through conversations with some big name designers, including the people behind some of the fonts and album covers and posters we all might recognize.

To me, type is the hardest thing I grapple with when working on FatMixx. It and color give me the most trouble. These ideas that are stuck in my head need the right typeface and the right spacing to work, and I’ll spend hours playing with fonts and colors before even starting on a new FM layout. (then I’ll usually give up and do something “boring” or random, but hey, I tried)

To that end, listening to these talented designers talk about how they approach type and how they interpret Helvetica was a neat hour plus of entertainment for me. If you’re a font geek, or if you have wondered how that ubiquitous font came to be, this is worth seeing. The history lesson alone is interesting enough.

It’s available on iTunes now:

(and, yes, it’s been a movie extravaganza this weekend)