Gary Hustwit has masterfully achieved what few have attempted; his documentary Helvetica can easily be called an international success. Hustwit has landed his film at the IFC Center, now accessible to a general public audience. During the first week of its release, Hustwit followed the film with a question-and-answer session. If you were not able to attend the first few showings, we’re able to bring you one of the Q&A sessions from 14 September.
Gary Hustwit: I’ve actually have a good question for Tobias, if we could start with that. When you walk into a place like the IFC Center that is totally done in Gotham, which is a typeface that you’ve designed, how does that feel?
Tobias Frere-Jones: Totally psyched! When I see one of my fonts I think about all the days and all the nights of drawing and looking at piles of proofs that took to make this design, in a way it’s really removed from what it’s meant for in the end—organizing information and all that. To see it up on the screen giving you show times, postcards and members guides, it’s come to life now.
Hustwit: What is with all the real estate companies using Gotham. It seems to be plastered everywhere.
Frere-Jones: I have no idea—I’ve seen it a lot in the real estate pages. Maybe it’s the architectural reference in the origin; maybe it’s what you need when you’re creating new condos.
Hustwit: Does it bother you when people misuse your typefaces? Or do you think that’s not possible because they are so good?
Frere-Jones: I try to make it hard for people to screw it up. I try to remove the opportunities to bend it this way or stretch it that way; the italics are already there and the condensed is already there. You can’t account for everything—people are going to do something nasty to it: mess with the letter spacing, stretch it, or whatever they do.
I remember the first time, many years ago, when I saw some one messing up one of my fonts, and I was horribly shaken. But I’ve come to realize that this is going to happen. Other people will do better things with it.
Hustwit: Why is it that you never see Helvetica set in a paperback book as a text?
Frere-Jones: It was never really made to set text. Helvetica does all kinds of things really well, but not text. That’s actually its weak point. The way the characters are drawn—they do not lend themselves to making legible word shapes at small sizes.
The original offering of Neue Haas Grotesk as you saw in the film stops at 8 points. It doesn’t go down to the sizes needed for extensive body copy. The designers understood the limitations of its design, but this really hasn’t been communicated since its birth.
How did you find so many people that are so charismatic, articulate, and enthusiastic about a font?
Hustwit: Well they are all simply graphic designers. They are all charismatic and articulate—that is a given. Everyone was enthusiastic about talking about what they love to do. People were excited that someone cared to do a documentary about their work. Especially people like Massimo Vignelli and Matthew Carter. They’ve been working for 50 years, and no one has done this before—that’s insane.
I think everyone thought I was a little crazy at first. Once I explained the bigger picture that I wanted to show in the film, people understood.
In the interviews, I’m the audience, I wanted to know all of that stuff. The designers really picked up on that and realized that I wanted to be there—this wasn’t just a job.
When you talk about the licensing of your fonts and your creation how does this work and how do you make a living off of this?
Frere-Jones: The business transaction behind it is: you buy the license that has a certain scope. You purchase this software and you can use it in those parameters. It’s no different if you were to buy a copy of Illustrator. What happens with the money afterwards is all based on the agreement between the designer and vendor.
It’s like the hit singles that record companies produce—and the royalties go to the original edition and the root.
Hustwit: I think it depends, its like when you buy a Macintosh. The fonts on the system are all licensed from those foundries.
Frere-Jones: Yes, a percentage of the cost of the Mac includes the licensing of those fonts to the type foundry.
Hustwit: There have been a few fonts that I’ve been reading about that are variations of Helvetica the first being Arial? What’s wrong with Arial, and why does everyone hate it?
Frere-Jones: Where to begin.
I think one of the great things about Helvetica is its balance and its solidity. That comes from the shapes, which incidentally, are what make it weak in text sizes. Those were the features that were removed and altered in Arial. Its best aspect has been deliberately removed and replaced with something arbitrary. It’s like going to see a remake of a film, and all of the best scenes have been taken out. The result has always struck me as watery and non-committal.
All typefaces have an inherent personality and all Arial can say is, “I don’t care what happens. I can’t be bothered, so just leave me alone.”
It seems that in the end of the movie you do not state an opinion about the font.
Hustwit: This is the first film that I’ve made. I’d rather lay out a lot of ideas and a lot of imagery and let the audience decide and complete the picture. A lot of people ask, “Why didn’t you just go out and ask random people on the street: what is your favorite font?” We actually thought about doing this. You can figure these things out yourself any old day and ask your friends what their favorite font is any day. However, you can’t sit down and ask Wim Crouwel any old day.
I didn’t want to channel it in any way for or against, it was to provoke some though and show the font in a beautiful way.
Frere-Jones: What possesses a person to make a film about a font?
Hustwit: I saw it in my head, and once you get something in your brain you can’t get it out. As I said, I am the audience for this film. It was something that I wanted to see and I couldn’t believe that it hadn’t been made when I thought about it two years ago.
Frere-Jones: but you also have a background in typography…
Hustwit: Well sort of, I did back in ‘88 when I bought my first Macintosh. I’ve always been sort of a closet designer. I made some grunge fonts back in ‘93. I was just screwing around. I really had no idea what I was doing. Trivia: the NYC recycling logo that is on all the trash cans in the city is one of mine…it’s called Nicotine. It’s a very appropriate usage of the font, because it is a piece of crap.
What font would you say your individual handwriting closely resembles?
Hustwit: I would say that mine looks like Interstate.
Frere-Jones: My personal handwriting has deteriorated in the last 10 years or so. Most of the time I’m in a hurry and don’t have the time to make it look nice.
Hustwit: Would you say any of the fonts you’ve created look like your handwriting?
Frere-Jones: None that I’ve done so far.
Hustwit: Mine sort of looks like some of the really crappy fonts I’ve made. I’ve tried to write like Helvetica. I can’t do it.