Lengthy essay titled “Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica” about the independent director’s hit documentary on the history and social impact of the typeface Helvetica.

Excerpt:

“Experimental Jetset and British designer Michael C. Place are held up as the purveyors of the return to rational functionality in graphic design, in particular through their use of Helvetica. Danny van den Dungen, one of Experimental Jetset’s three principals discusses the practice’s work and their return to a reliance upon Helvetica as both a style and a step in the evolution of Modernism. van den Dungen opines that this return to the high modern style (though paired with pop colors and more radical grid constructions) logically follows the free-for-all deconstructive tactics of David Carson and Emigré, while simultaneously embracing the culturally resistant attitudes of early Modernism and functional aspects of late Modernism. He speaks of the use of the Modern design language as being part of the Dutch design continuum, and that what they are doing is merely (yet quite consciously) expanding upon the visual language of their country of origin. In all, it is a logical discussion of contrasting ideas and idealogies that makes his approach very convincing. Michael Place discusses Helvetica from a primarily stylistic viewpoint – his work is highly influenced by the work of Swiss International Style high priest Josef Müller Brockmann – and when he discusses the large-scale identity projects that he desires, it from the launching point of “Wouldn’t that be cool?!”, not an essential, unified approach to corporate identity. Surprisingly absent from this section of the film is an interview with the members of Japanese design firm Groovisions. Groovisions reliance upon Helvetica and influence from Müller Brockmann’s work stands as the third most popular illustration of contemporary graphic designers using these same visual tropes in contemporary practice. The Tokyo-based company operates from a similar perspective to Place’s, of Modernity as style, not ideology, and their more current design work is starting to stray more and more from their old reliance upon what had become a default template of Modern artifice.”