Portland Documentary & eXperimental Film Festival

From its modest beginnings on the drafting board of a little-known Swiss designer in 1957, Helvetica has since grown to become the most commonly used font in the contemporary cultural landscape. It is the official font for thousands of corporate logos, used for signage in transportation systems around the globe, and is the default typeface for Apple Macintosh’s OS. Through insightful interviews with design moguls like David Carson, Matthew Carter, Massimo Vignelli, Erik Spiekermann, Experimental Jetset, and many others, filmmaker Gary Hustwit uses the proliferation of a single font to guide the viewer through an intelligent conversation about the evolution of design over the last half century and how graphic design is impacting us in our everyday lives. Filmed in the United States, England, the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, France and Belgium, Helvetica takes the viewer on a tour of our urban spaces to illustrate how design is impacting the visual culture.

Helvetica is Gary Hustwit’s directorial debut. He has produced a number of feature documentaries, including I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, the award-winning film about the band Wilco; Moog, the documentary about electronic music pioneer Robert Moog; and Drive Well, Sleep Carefully, a tour film about the band Death Cab for Cutie.

A poetic meditation on the desire to make permanent what is ephemeral.

A short animated film set to a real audio recording found on a telephone answering machine.