The Prague screening last night at Febiofest was fantastic, a packed cinema despite some tech delays with an earlier film that caused us to start 40 minutes late (at 11:15pm!). Almost everyone stuck around into the wee hours for the Q&A. Questions ranged from the basic “How did you pick all the designers in the film?” to “Did you realize before you started the project the relationship between Helvetica and politics?” and lots in between. Special thanks to Pavel, Jasmina, Dominika, and everyone at Febiofest for inviting me.

The puffy arches.

Is it just me, or does our poster really stand out? (Note: this poster was stolen a few hours later…)

Some free advertising from filmmaker David Kleijwegt (The Eternal Children) and the lovely Manon.

Febiofest programmer, music journalist, filmmaker, and all-around Czech rock star Pavel Klusak gets recognized.

There’s quite a bit of discussion over on Momus’ blog about Helvetica (the font and film), but especially about Vignelli’s NYC subway map and the comments he made in the outtake clip I posted a while back. The infamous map actually does make several appearances in the final film, in one shot Vignelli lovingly unfolds it while talking about Helvetica, in another it’s seen on the bookshelf of Michael C. Place. The discussion points on Momus’ blog are very much ones that flow through the film, we just didn’t have time in the final cut to get deeper into the map controversy specifically.

Advance tickets for the April 11 Boston Premiere at MassArt are gone (there may be a few stand-by tickets available at the door, I’m looking into this). Thanks to the folks at Eventworks for organizing the event, it should be good fun. See you in Beantown.

Tickets for the Czech premiere tomorrow night at Febiofest in Prague are officially sold out. Děkuji!

So I arrived at the airport in Prague to find that the zipper on my suitcase had broken and my clothes had spilled out onto the baggage conveyor. Then when I got outside, I was greeted by the guest relations person from Febiofest, a driver, and a television crew:

Apparently they were very interested in filming my exposed t-shirts and dirty socks. But everyone at the festival is great, really looking forward to the screening tomorrow night.

Last night was the European Premiere of the film at the Museum für Gestaltung, and a Helvetica 50th Birthday party here in Zürich. All I can say is: awesome. I cannot express how grateful I am for all the work that went into yesterday’s events, and all the positive feedback I received from attendees. We had a great panel discussion to start the afternoon, another sold-out screening, and an amazing afterparty at the Freitag factory complete with a giant metal ‘H’ as a disco ball! Many thanks to event organizer Lars Müller, Christian Brändle, Simone Wildhaber, everyone at the Museum für Gestaltung, Iris and Martin at soDA Magazine, Freitag, and everyone who helped put the day’s events together. Danke!

More pictures of all the Zürich events here.

Tickets for our Canadian Premiere at the Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival in Toronto are now on sale. The big premiere event is Saturday, 4/21/07, at the Royal Cinema, 9:45PM. Tickets are normal movie price, $10! There will be a second screening on Sunday, 4/22/07, at the Isabel Bader Theatre, 2:30PM. I’ll be there to present both screenings, and we may have a few surprise guests.

Get tickets here, now.

Some stills from the CNN International story about the film yesterday. It was actually pretty fun, the producers did a great job. For the lead-in to the interview, they had BREAKING NEWS flashed across the screen, but it was in Comic Sans! Then the anchors were like, “Something’s wrong here… this doesn’t look right. But if we change it to Helvetica…”

I can’t really remember what I said… all I can remember is saying the phrase “visual landscape” and babbling about how I flew on American Airlines a lot as a child. They’re sending me a copy of the story, will post the video when I get it. After the interview was over, the next segment was the weather, and the anchors asked the weather reporter what her favorite font was, and she said something like, “I used to love choosing different fonts, but now they tell me I have to use Helvetica.”

The strangest things about being on CNN: following a story about elephants who’d been injured by landmines, and having make-up actually painted on my face with an airbrush…

Shots of the screen in the “green room” by Brigid:

For those of you who actually plan on watching this… the time of the interview has been changed to 7:45pm EST.

Note to self: get a haircut tomorrow.

Get your Tivos ready… I’ll be on CNN International (which coincidentally uses Helvetica for their on-screen graphics) tomorrow, Tuesday, March 20th at 7:30pm EST (GMT -5). I’ll be on for five minutes discussing the film and showing some clips too. Check CNN’s website for channel info. Can we get a little more make-up on the capital “R” please?