New appreciation for typeface

I saw the movie Helvetica last night, and I don't think I'll ever look at typeface the same again. It was pretty amazing to hear type designers describe their craft with parallels to politics, world history, artistic genres, social movements, everything you could imagine. I had no idea how important, how meaningful, and, perhaps most shockingly, how controversial the Helvetica typeface is.

Here's a quote from the movie to give you a taste:

When you talk about the design of Haas Neue Grotesk or Helvetica, what it's all about is the interrelationship of the negative shape, the figure/ground relationship, the shapes between characters and within characters, with the black, if you like, with the inked surface. And the Swiss pay more attention to the background, so that the counters and the space between characters just hold the letters. I mean you can't imagine anything moving. It is so firm. It's not a letter that bent to shape, it's a letter that lives in a powerful matrix of surrounding space. It's ... oh, it's brilliant when it's done well.

If you find that excerpt intriguing, then you'll find the movie worth watching.