Design Tagged Articles at Cinematical
SXSW Review: Objectified
The website for Objectified asks an interesting question, "How many manufactured objects did you touch this morning, between waking up and leaving your house?" The answer is a lot more than you'd expect. Nearly everything you touch and encounter in life that is man made was specifically designed at some point, whether it's your fork, your pepper grinder, or the table you eat on. The computer you're using to read this article was most likely obsessively sketched, spec'd, and confabbed about over conference tables before the design was finalized. But most people don't even consider what went into creating it because the design is transparent to them.
Objectified wants to fix that by calling attention to the work that goes into crafting the things we use every day; from toothbrushes, to laptops, to chairs, to potato peelers. It's directed by Gary Hustwit, the same guy behind the typography documentary Helvetica, although it's not quite as engaging as that movie. You end up with intriguing scenes of objects being machined and lots of talking heads with lots to say but in boring static shots. Why not turn those into voiceovers to show us more visual design porn?
SXSW Review: Helvetica
Filed under: Documentary », Independent », SXSW », Theatrical Reviews », Festival Reports »
The line-up for Helvetica at South by Southwest this year became its own joke. It's a documentary about a font; what better place for its debut than an audience of computer nerds (for SXSW Interactive) who dig visual design and film nerds (for SXSW Film) needing a break from torrents of either earnestness or blood? But you don't have to be a nerd to like Helvetica -- well, scratch that; you do, a little bit, but you are, so it's okay. And frankly, by the standards of film-festival documentary (which can often be wrenchingly grim or navel-gazingly narcissistic), Helvetica's the feel-good, high-concept movie of the year.
Written and directed by Gary Hustwit, Helvetica seems like a pretty narrow-focus idea; but, then again, you could also argue that one of the best things documentary film can do is go from the micro to the macro -- looking at one story to see where it connects with all stories. And with Helvetica, thanks to Hustwit's clean lines of narrative and intellectually playful style, we get a great look at the universality of Helvetica as a typeface and how, after it was unveiled in 1957 and hailed as a miracle of modernism, it became the unofficial font of official activities. Hustwit's camera noses through a variety of urban landscapes and shows you just how omnipresent Helvetica is -- traffic signs, logos, official notices, storefronts.
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