Erik Spiekermann,
Matthew Carter,
Massimo Vignelli,
Wim Crouwel,
Hermann Zapf
... see more 
In 2005 a number of provocative, award-winning ads appeared that touted the Helvetica font; Gary Hustwit explores the subject protractedly with his feature-length essay film Helvetica. The documentary... read more
DVD Release Date: November 20, 2007
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Stats: 1,061 reviews
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Flixster Reviews (1,061)
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January 19, 2011Typeface designer Jonathan Hoefler, one of the many interviewees for this film, compares Helvetica, the font, in the film's introduction to off-white paint. No one really notices or cares about it. In terms of describing the average person's attitude toward the font, he couldn't ... read more
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January 14, 2011My lukewarm reception of this documentary may be due to the fact that I abhor the eponymous font itself. I'm loath to use sans serifs anyway, but Helvetica really just makes me feel yuck.
Perhaps I'm not in this movie's target audience. It seems interesting and well-research... read more -
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February 20, 2012Some people really like fonts. I am not one who is interested in this much detail about typography. For a doc about graphic design and advertising, Art & Copy is slightly better. I thought this would at least be about fonts in general, but it really is almost exclusively about on... read more
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June 3, 2008[font=Century Gothic]"Helvetica" is an illuminating documentary about how even the things we take for granted may have a more complex story than we originally imagined. Take the font Helvetica for instance. Did you know Helvetica is from the Latin word for Swiss and that it is ... read more
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April 19, 2010Often interesting, sporadically fascinating documentary on the popular font. It's a little too exhaustive for such a niche subject, but it's handsomely filmed and edited and has a quite brilliant music score.
Hey, it's a doc on a font; there's not much else I can write.
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July 6, 2010Not super revelatory or intensely dramatic, but amazing in the way it exposes something ubiquitous that most people have never noticed before. This movie ensures we'll never think about typefaces the same way again. Makes one wonder what other details relegated to our subconsciou... read more
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February 4, 2009Surprisngly interesting doc about a font (of all things). I learned more than I ever thought I cared to know about typefaces. I'm sure I would have enjoyed the whole thing had it not started skipping towards the end (thanks Netflix!)
Critic Reviews
September 19, 2007
Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly
September 12, 2007
Matt Zoller Seitz, New York Times
Overlong but fascinating, Gary Hustwit's documentary posits Helvetica, a sans-serif typeface developed in 1957.
September 11, 2007
Julia Wallace, Village Voice
Helvetica keenly distills the eternal aesthetic battle between the classical and the baroque and explores what happens when a revolution goes mainstream. Full Review
June 16, 2007
J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader
The computer revolution may have democratized graphic design, letting anyone decorate his own desktop or MySpace page, but a certain amount of conformity is necessary for society to function. Full Review
June 15, 2007
Bill Stamets, Chicago Sun-Times
A splendid documentary about one typeface, designed in 1957 in Switzerland. Full Review
June 14, 2007
Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
By rounding up a great group of eloquent obsessives eager to explain their feelings about a font, Hustwit has come up with 80 unexpectedly blissful minutes. Full Review
March 7, 2008
Jeff Shannon, Seattle Times
Helvetica is one of those rare films in which the exploration of a specific topic leads to expanding horizons of perception. Full Review
March 7, 2008
Bill White, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Director Gary Hustwit opens our eyes to the visual culture of typography in much the same way as Andy Warhol once freed us from the tyranny of advertising, by inviting reflection upon that which is in... Full Review
October 13, 2007
Cath Clarke, Guardian [UK]
The tweaky world of typography is not perhaps as much at the heart of how we live as these designers would have us believe, but it's enjoyable to watch them rhapsodise sans serifs and spacing. Full Review
September 25, 2007
Michael W. Phillips, Jr., Goatdog's Movies
A little like a study of the American Civil War that discusses the Confederacy without mentioning the Union. Full Review
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Helvetica
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