Tickets for the June 13th San Francisco Premiere, hosted by AIGA SF at the Landmark Embarcadero Theater, are now on sale. There is limited space at this event… get on it.

What can I say about our Canadian Premiere at Hot Docs in Toronto… wow. Over 700 people at our two screenings, and hundreds more turned away. This is starting to get ridiculous! I want to thank the audiences of both shows, you guys were fantastic.

There was even a militant anti-Arial protest in front of the theater, tear gas, riot police, the works.

For the people who didn’t get into the screenings, we’ll be doing a week at Toronto cinema later this summer, so please stay tuned for details. My thanks to Sean, Chris, Brett, Myrocia, and everyone at Hot Docs. I will definitely be returning to the festival in years to come. Cheers!

I also got to check out Jennifer Venditti’s documentary Billy the Kid. This film has been getting tons of buzz since it won the Best Documentary prize at South by Southwest, and after seeing it (finally… our films have been scheduled at the same showtimes in the past three festivals, so we both got to see each other’s films this weekend) I’ll just say that it’s amazing, definitely check it out if you can.

Veer has kicked off a Love/Hate Helvetica Contest!

“To coincide with our bipolar new Helvetica notebook — and to celebrate the wonderful Helvetica film we’re involved with — we’re holding a contest. Tell us why you love or hate Helvetica (the typeface). Make it an ode, a rant, a paean, a screed, a whatever. Make it up to 200 words long. E-mail your entry to ideas at veer dot com.

Entrants with the best “love” and “hate” entries win their choice of limited-edition Helvetica film posters, plus two Helvetica notebooks and a Veer T-shirt. Five runners-up will win Helvetica notebooks. So get ranting or raving. We’ll close the entries on May 7th.”

Start scribbling.

The battle of Connecticut college screenings went down last Wednesday and Thursday. UCONN had a Helvetica cake. Yale had Helvetica cookies (okay, they were more like Arial Rounded cookies). UCONN had a foosball table at the after-party. Yale had Matthew Carter, Tobias Frere-Jones, and Michael Bierut at the post-screening panel. UCONN had Lindsey Voskowsky, a fiery young lass who kicked my ass in foosball. So I’m declaring the battle of the Connceticut colleges… a draw. Thanks to everyone at both schools, I had an amazing time!

The UCONN cake gets cut.

Hallelujah!

Yale pre-screening slide show.

Yale poster.

I haven’t been able to catch my breath since the awesome Full Frame Documentary Festival screening last Saturday… or from the catastrophic-weather-flight-cancelled road trip that ensued, with me and four other filmmakers caravaning 12 hours in a Chevy mini-van. But I have pictures. Lots of pictures. And you know, they speak a few dozen words or something.

In a nice touch, the festival changed the font they usually set the film names in to, guess what…

Superstar blogger (and occasional filmmaker) AJ Schnack (Kurt Cobain: About a Son) gets grilled by IndiePix.

“Five documentary filmmakers. 1,000 miles. One mini-van. What happens when the people who in reality document reality get a too real for reality?” In the backseat: Jesse Epstein (The Guarantee) and Robin Hessman (Russia’s Pepsi Generation). In the back-backseat: Robin Honan (Freeheld). Photo by Trish Dalton. More pix (and cell-phone movies) from this bunch soon.

Thanks to Nancy, Phoebe, Selcen, and everyone at Full Frame for a great event, and for their grace, talent, and composure. And I meant it when I said that was the best Helvetica has looked at any screening we’ve done so far. Thank you!!!!

The Laguna Beach OC Premiere screening is sold out! But we’ve managed to add a second showing at 9pm. Also, our Chicago and Washington DC premieres have been announced! See the screening schedule. Tickets for the Wexner Center screening, and the Walker Art Center screening are on sale now. Git em! More soon (lots of European dates about to be announced).

LAGUNA BEACH TIX ON SALE NOW
Tickets for the Orange County Premiere event on April 26th at the South Coast Cinemas Main Beach Theater are now on sale. This event will feature a Q&A with me and David Carson, tickets are $15, and it will sell out. Get tickets.

WALKER ART CENTER TICKETS ON SALE
Tickets for the Minneapolis Premiere, May 31st at the Walker Art Center, are available now.

SAN FRANCISCO PREMIERE ANNOUNCED
The San Francisco Premiere event, organized by AIGA San Francisco as part of Design Week, will be held June 13th at the Embarcadero Cinemas. I’ll be there to present the screening along with special guest designers. More information here, ticket info will be available soon.

USC PREMIERE SCREENING #2 SOLD OUT…
Tickets for the added 9pm screening at USC on April 27th are history. If you’re in Southern California and want to catch Helvetica, you should get tickets for the Laguna Beach screening now.

UPSTATE NEW YORK EVENTS & TYPO FEST
AIGA Upstate New York is involved in a trio of Helvetica events. There’s an April 19th screening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and the Buffalo and Rochester screenings are now at the center of Typo Fest, a celebration of the graphic and typographic arts. The week’s events feature studio visits, gallery openings, and even an ultra-rare appearance by legendary type designer Hermann Zapf! Get more info…

Great screenings at MassArt in Boston last night, and at RISD in Providence the night before. Both were packed, with smart audiences and good Q&A’s. I’m beginning to sound like a broken record here… but all the screenings so far have been awesome! I really felt like both the RISD and MassArt audiences “got” the film, and I had really good discussions afterwards (I mean after the Q&A, at a bar, where all the real discussions seem to happen…). It’s been interesting to see how different people see the film and how it affects them, and how their comments are making me think more about the reasons I made the film in the first place… more on that later.

Matthew Carter and Mike Parker joined me onstage after the MassArt screening for a Q&A, the highlight of which was Matthew’s definitive “Arial story”, even I learned a lot from that. Enjoyed a few pints at the Squealing Pig after the screening with the Font Bureau gang.

Thanks to Nicole and Rafael and everyone at RISD, George and everyone at EventWorks and MassArt. And thanks to Monotype Imaging for the MassArt refreshments.

Onward to Full Frame in Durham…

Nicole Juen introduces the RISD event (and sneaks in a few font jokes)

A sell out at MassArt

Mr. Mike Parker, with Matthew Carter to the right

A second screening has been added to our sold-out Los Angeles Premiere event at USC, April 27th. This 9:30pm screening will feature a Q&A with me and David Carson, and will sell out quickly, reserve your tickets now.

Thanks to everyone who came to last night’s New York Premiere… The post-screening panel with me, Massimo Vignelli, Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones, and Jakob Trollbäck was hilarious, with Vignelli at his usual scene-stealing best. When someone asked the panelists what was the worst use of Helvetica they’d ever seen, Vignelli said, “In the States,” which, after a pause, people realized was his answer, not him clarifying the question. Classic.

The after-party hosted by Veer was packed, many many wine bottles were emptied, and typographic talk was talked. So we’re 5 for 5 on sold-out, really fun premiere events. Special thanks to Robyn Jordan, Stephen Hinton, Tobias Frere-Jones and everyone at AIGA NY, Tanis Shortt and everyone at Veer, and the Parsons The New School staff for all the effort. And extra special thanks to type legend Ed Benguiat, who came to the screening and gave me a Helvetica specimen poster he designed for the old New York typehouse Photo-Lettering Inc. Thanks Ed!

And for you New Yorkers who weren’t able to get tickets, we’re in the process of organizing a multi-week cinema run in Manhattan, so there will be more chances to see the film soon.

Outside

Inside (I dig the spaceship-like interior of Tischman Auditorium)

Veer gave out these double-sided love/hate Helvetica notebooks (the cover text is based on another Vignelli quote). The insides are blank lined pages, but if you look really closely you discover that the lines are actually text of quotes from the film, either for or against Helvetica, depending on which side you’re reading. Brilliant.