I love fonts. When I use to have my graphic business, I would spend lots of money on fonts. These were the days when desktop publishing was getting started. I adore certain fonts and despise others. For example, I cannot stand “times” or its cousins, like “new times”. It is an ugly font. The case height is too small, so it is hard to read.

Yesterday in one of my RSS feeds, there was a mention of a documentary called, Helvetica. This font is used every day on our computers, we see it on street signs — and we take it for granted. The producer, Gary Hustwit’s unique documentary introduces Helvetica, whose readability has made it the most popular font in the world it is just over 50 years old.

I ran over over to netflicks to see if it was available, yep. Not only was it in the catalog, it was an “instant watch”. I loaded it in my instant watch queue and when I got home, I started to watch it. I have the RUKU box, so the instant watch is streamed to my HD TV. How cool is that.

helvetica

It’s Helvetica night in America, the 53-minute TV version of the film airs on PBS 1/6/9 (in some cities it’s on this weekend, check your local listings for Independent Lens, the series that it’s part of).