HELVETICA | DOCUMENTARY

Under recommendation of my Tutor at Uni, today I finally watched the short film Helvetica.
I regretted never having seen it before because I found really interesting and helpful for my practice. As the title suggests, the film speaks about the font Helvetica and its creation. It is a widely used sans-serif (definition here: http://nicoloellerdesign.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/typography-terminology.html) typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger.

Helvetica documentary poster.

Notable features of this type as originally designed include the termination of all strokes on exactly horizontal or vertical lines and unusual tight letter spacing, which give it a dense, compact appearance. The name comes from Helvezia, which is the Latin name for Switzerland. So Helvetica means 'Swiss'. 
In the film, different Designers such as Massimo Vignelli, Wim Crouwel, Matthew Carter, Neville Brody, Paula Scher, Stefan Sagmeister and David Carson talk about the use Helvetica in their and others work at that period. It is widely used for branding, infact the majority of famous brands we all know use this Typeface. (Examples in images below).

Use of Helvetica in American Airlines new (above) and old (below) logo and American Apparel logo and advertisement.

This typeface, to me, looks really clean and this is the reason why it has been over used. It does not give meaning to any word but it just give importance and identity to a brand. It can reflect the way I like to design, for this reason, I used Helvetica different times in my work.

Watch film here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/movie/helvetica/id284740710