Helvetica was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award this morning, in the Truer Than Fiction category. Lisa Kudrow actually pronounced my name correctly during the announcements. The award “is presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features who has not yet received significant attention.” I feel very honored, thanks so much to everyone at Film Independent!

A delicious-looking yet inedible cake in Atlanta…

So I hosted my final public screening with the film last Thursday in Atlanta. (Thursday was also the closing night of our 8-week run at the IFC Center in NYC.) Thanks to AIGA Atlanta and the Art Institute for organizing a perfect ending to the tour, a sold-out screening at the Woodruff Arts Center and a post-screening Q&A with me and the always astute Matthew Carter. The film will of course continue to screen at public events in the coming months, but without me there to do the Q&A. Really, I love graphic design, and I love typography, but after 100 events in the past seven months I can’t answer any more questions about fonts!

After the Atlanta event, I went to a friend’s wedding in Tulsa, Oklahoma. At the reception, the rabbi came up to me and said, “I heard you made the Helvetica film?! That’s my favorite movie, I saw it at South by Southwest, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since!” It’s a strange and beautiful world where I can attend a wedding in Tulsa and have the rabbi know my work. Amazing.

A shortened version of Helvetica will be broadcast as part of BBC1’s “Imagine” strand tonight at 10:35pm London time. In order to fit it into Imagine’s time slot, the BBC took out about 35 minutes… so there’s no Hermann Zapf, no Linotype guys, no Michael C. Place, no Norm, and lots of other cuts. Such is the way of broadcast television, I’m afraid. The full 80-minute version of the film will make it onto broadcast television in various countries soon, will keep you posted.

***Interesting side note: apparently there’s been some back and forth at the BBC about whether or not to include the shot of the skateboard that says “Fuck Yoga” on it (in Helvetica of course). The editors wanted to keep it in, but if so then they’ll have to run a warning before the show about the “strong language”. Heh heh… we’ll see what happens…

So I got back to New York, and the folks at Plexifilm chained me to a desk, put a pile of film stills in front of me, and stuck a sharpie in my hand. It’s pretty bizarre (and suprisingly time consuming) signing your name 1,000 times. Your signature starts to look weird. And I can’t help but feel that I’m damaging these beautiful photos by scrawling my scrawl on them. I mentioned this to Brian at Plexi and he said, “Shut up and keep signing.”

Signing stills for the deluxe box sets