SI 520 Niki Burke Helvetica Producer: Gary Hustwit Year: 2007 Informational or Promotional? This documentary was more information than promotional since it told the history of the font being created and showed many opinions of the font from both people who love the font and people who think differently. They explained how Helvetica is neutral and efficient. Primary Audience I think the primary audience of the documentary was towards designers and graphic artists. Those are the people who will take more time choosing the best font for what ever they are designing and it is also their job to find a font that looks great and is readable to an audience. It is also a documentary for anyone interested in developing different typefaces or typomaniacs. Relevance to our Course This documentary directly relates to our course when we are choosing our own fonts for our projects. It will help us think more about readability and simplicity. It is not a good way to design by choosing a complicated font, if people are not able to read the message that you are trying to portray. They also mentioned the use of grids, which we have talked about many times in class and how that can help create a design that is easy to read. This applies to typeface and designs in general. How Does Type Affect Our Lives? Type is all around us and many times we depend on its readability. If the government had chosen a complicated font for a Stop sign and people were unable to read the sign in time, then there may be more accidents. If a company chooses a font that is hard to read for their advertisement, customers may not understand the message they are sending and the company could lose out on sales. It is important to choose a font that is easy to read if you want to get your message across easily to someone else. In the film, they discussed the enormous amount of responsibility this leaves to the designers. They mentioned how the distance between letters is like the space between notes in music. American Airlines chose their logo to incorporate red, white, and blue and have not changed it since it incorporates the message they want to send and is easy to read. They also explained that the great thing about Helvetica is that it can, in a way, transform for different situations. When American Apparel uses the font, it looks chic-y, but elsewhere looks sober. It is a very subjective font and can have a personality of its own like drawings do.