Helvetica
It’s one of the most ubiquitous fonts of the ages. Helvetica is pushing 60, but still manages to be relevant despite our ever-changing digital (and real-time) universe. This full-length moving picture takes its viewers from Amsterdam to Austria, all the while detailing the differences and improvements type has made to the developments around a certain class of people. As with any solid and well-loved typeface, Helvetica is not just a typeface hastily sketched, put into ink blocks and then modified for artistic mediums: print-screening, Microsoft Word and InDesign. Helvetica is a true psychological collaboration, a product of the best of the best in design. We’ll be honest – a few of our reviews might be polarizing for the non-designer, but Helvetica appeals to the masses.
Objectified
Gary Hustwit’s Objectified gives our intricate obsessions with materialism quite the new meaning. Through visceral, almost in-your-face descriptions and conversations with product designers, the film takes our everyday must-haves and rips them apart: how are they made? What drove the its initial design, and how does this invention manage to stay useful, even relevant through the years? Perhaps more importantly, Objectified forces us as consumers to take a nosedive into the world of things. The realizations we emerge with might not be tangible at all.
Linotype: The Film
Although it’s no longer something we think about when we think about typography (hello, InDesign and high-speed wireless printers!), indie flick Linotype takes us back to the start of it all. Become entranced by the complexity (and simplicity, don’t forget) of the Deutsch-built, 1960s machine that changed how writers, designers, advertisers and businessmen ‘round the world communicate. Produced and directed by Doug Wilson, you’ll feel a bit of a twinge for days you’ve never experienced and people you’ll never know once you feast your eyes on the typographic masterpiece that is Linotype.
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Exit Through the Gift Shop story of graffiti, and the masterminds behind the politicized spray paints that transformed the way some people think about societal issues. The nearly infamous by-now Bansky is your protagonist, flanked by Shephard Fairey and others with similar ideals, but different executions. Take a fresh exit not through the gift shop, but from society on this one, albeit just for 60-some odd minutes. You won’t soon regret it.
The Shining
Plot: Family goes to Colorado to vacation in this mansion, get stuck on top of a mountain because of a blizzard and it’s haunted.
This horror movie isn’t so scream-inducing as it is quietly chilling, but the imagery and stark contrasts resonate with our team of creatives at TNW all the same. Each scene plays beautifully into the rule of thirds, the backdrop as much a part of the film as a director himself is – but yet, without it, The Shining wouldn’t have nearly the impact it does. Even 20-something odd years later, the “solitude, isolation” Jack Nicholson speaks of throughout the film, whether to himself or to his increasingly panicked child and wife (Shelley Duvall) wouldn’t have been possible without the uniquely vacant set that the crew created. Props to Stanley Kubrick for directing a film that both makes us jump and renders us unable to look away, mystified by design in motion.
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