Another week, another slew of great cities and shows. It started with a sold-out Kansas City screening organized by AIGA KC. No, I didn’t get to eat any BBQ, but I did have a great time, culminating with a late-night surprise gig by the band Aqualung. The KC crew also made very nice “What the Helvetica?” shirts. Special thanks to Christine Taylor and everyone in Kansas City for inviting me.

Then it was off to the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, for another sold-out screening. Dave Filipi, film curator at the center, told the audience that only Martin Scorcese and Jim Jarmusch’s appearances had sold-out faster. But were those guys out in the lobby selling t-shirts after their screenings? No way. Gotta keep it real. And when in Columbus, eat at Surly Girl Saloon, an excellent cafe in town (owned by one of the members of Ohio indie legends Scrawl) that serves a mean spaghetti with chili.

Dave Filipi intros the Wexner screening

Next stop: north to Montreal. I’d never been to Montreal before, and I really enjoyed my weekend there hosted by Matt Soar and the Logo Cities symposium at Concordia University. Our screening there was the biggest single-room crowd we’ve had, over 550 people. And more custom Helvetica-related shirts! Merci Montreal!

Concordia volunteers with their donation boxes

Then I headed west to lovely Calgary for a private screening for the employees at Veer, and a public screening at the Uptown Stage & Screen, a fantastic cinema/lounge from the ’50s. HBO happened to be holding a cast and crew screening for a film they’d shot in Calgary, and had brought in some insane HD projection system, which we got to piggyback on. The result was the best quality projection I’ve seen of the film so far. Special thanks to Tanis Shortt at Veer and Gwen Hetherington of GDC Alberta South for organizing this great evening.

I awoke at 5am the next morning and flew to Western New York for two screenings as part of Typo Fest, organized by Hallwalls, WNY Book Arts Collective, AIGA Upstate NY, P22 Type Foundry, and others. The Buffalo and Rochester screenings were both great, but I’ve got to hand it to the students at RIT. They put together the best collection of collateral material of any screening we’ve had so far… t-shirts, multiple posters, Vignelli-inspired subway signs, a musuem quality Helvetica exhibit, even a giant Helvetica rice crispy treat. RIT has officially set the bar in terms of attention to detail. Thanks everyone!

As an added treat at the Rochester event, RIT brought Hermann Zapf over from Germany! Talk about a special guest. RIT had recently collaborated with Zapf on the limited-edition book Alphabet Stories, and he was signing copies at the RIT library for five hours. Because when Hermann Zapf signs a book for you, he doesn’t just scribble “Best Wishes”. He executes a beautiful calligraphic rendering of your initials, which took around five minutes per person. While he signed my book, I thanked him for appearing in the film (albeit briefly). He responded by telling me to get my hand off the table, I was moving it and he couldn’t concentrate on the calligraphy…