Helvetica took Scandinavia by storm last weekend with special event screenings in Copenhagen and Oslo. Summer has definitely arrived in the Nordic countries: it was 80-90 degrees every day, and a celebratory mood filled the streets. For those of you who haven’t visited Denmark or Norway, the daylight in summertime lasts ridiculously long: in Copenhagen the sun sets at around 10:30pm, and in Oslo it was even later, it was still light out at midnight! Bizzare.

I got to Copenhagen after a red-eye flight from Newark and checked into my hotel, the Fox. You may have heard of this place, each room was decorated by a different graphic designer or artist. I rarely sleep on those overnight flights, so I was trashed and needed some rest. But when I opened the door to my room, here’s what I was confronted with:

Aside from the fact that graffiti and street art are over (more on that topic later), this wasn’t exactly the tranquil setting I was hoping for. I went back downstairs and asked for something “more chill” (this took a little translation effort) and ended up in a room designed by Rinzen where “the good spirits of sleep watch over this room, fluidly roaming the walls and ceiling. They grin deliriously, oozing good fortune, freedom and happiness.” Uhm… okay… at least it wasn’t bright red. Overall I like the concept of the hotel, the free breakfast was good and free wi-fi on their outdoor roof deck was even better.

We kicked things off with the Sweet Talk Copenhagen premiere at the beautiful old Grand Teatret cinema. A sold-out crowd of 325 Danes packed the place, and local design heroes e-Types screened a cool animated 5-minute font film to start the evening. Thanks to Simon and Casper at Sweet Talk for organizing, and big thanks to Tiger for the huge refrigerator of free beer.

Kicking it with Jens and Jonas of e-Types.

And I’m officially adding Copenhagen to the “cities in Europe I could definitely move to” list… I ended up missing my flight to Oslo the next morning (by a mile). Those Danes can drink, let me tell ya.

I headed east to Oslo for the Grafill Summerparty premiere, held in another great space, an old converted factory called Fabriken. The Norwegians laid out a tasty spread of fresh boiled mini-lobsters, spicy grilled corn, boiled potatoes, and BBQ chicken for 200 people in an outdoor courtyard. After the film screening, the party moved indoors with DJs and more Helvetica (ugh), projected letterforms above the dance floor. At 2am everyone headed over to Blå, the alt live music venue across the river for more revelry, but I could barely keep my eyes open at that point. Thanks to Christian and everyone at Grafill for the hospitality.

A Helvetica summerparty in the blazing Norwegian sun.

The next day I had a chance to hang out in Oslo, where the entire city had turned out for a weekend street festival to kick-off the summer. I gorged myself on free fresh grilled salmon and laid on the grass in the park overlooking the harbor. Ahhh… Scandinavia.

The 6pm and 8:15pm premiere screenings the Friday at The Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago have sold out. But an additional 10:15pm late screening has been added, tickets are only available at the Siskel box office Friday.

A few photos from MoMA’s compact but very well done “50 Years of Helvetica” exhibit, to which I’m honored to have contributed. I finally got to see it over the weekend. It features a five-minute loop from the film, a few of the materials I’ve picked up along the way during the filming process, and of course specimens from MoMA’s Swiss poster collection. It’s up through April 2008, so check it out if you’re in New York City.

Last week was another hectic one, with screenings in Boston for the Society of Environmental Graphic Designers conference, two AIGA screenings in Nashville, and three sold-out shows at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. I hadn’t visited the Walker before, and I was really impressed by their art, film, and media programs. And the restaurant there is excellent! Note to self: need to hang out in Minneapolis in the springtime more. Special thanks to Andrew Blauvelt and the design department at the Walker for inviting me.

The Walker has a film program with Michel Gondry in attendance this week, and they were screening some of his short films while I was there. I liked the very sweet La Lettre, one of his first film attempts. But I literally fell asleep when I watched The Science of Sleep… but maybe that was the point? Je ne sais pas.

On to Copenhagen…

Three C’s: Cologne, Cleveland, and the Corcoran. See the screening schedule for more.

Tickets for the second San Francisco screening on June 13 at 10pm are now sold out. There may be stand-by tickets available at the door for both the 7pm and 10pm screenings at Embarcadero Cinemas. Arrive early… no guarantees.

Ahhhhh… Paris in the springtime. The quaint outdoor cafes, the wine, the romance, the Eiffel Tower, and the Helvetica. I rolled into Paris for two sold-out screenings at the Palais de Tokyo, a sprawling contemporary art gallery and performance space overlooking the Seine. Just before the first screening it started raining so hard that the PDT started to flood, and they had to close the galleries! There was an installation that consisted of large blocks of sugar laid out on the floor, and it was a sight to see all the PDT curators frantically trying to move the giant sugar cubes before they got wet. Luckily the rain subsided and the first screening was only delayed a few minutes.

The Experimental Jetset were in town on business and came to the screening, it was the first time they’d seen the film. Brigid also came over for the weekend, and the next night we all went out for burgers and then to see Battles at a small underground club, packed to the gills with 300 feverish French kids. Awesome.

Another exciting French development is that I’ll be curating a Helvetica exhibit at the Colette Paris gallery, September 3 to 29. The exhibit will feature prints and posters from designers in the film, historical materials related to the typeface, new work from French designers, and lots more. And the exhibit will close with an exclusive advance release of the DVD… stay tuned for details.

Merci beaucoup to Mark Alizart and everyone at PDT, and to Alex and Veronique at F7. Also, when in Paris, stay at the Hotel Le Quartier Bastille, Le Faubourg. Sleek little rooms, cheap, good location, free wi-fi, and 60’s French pop in the elevator.

“By popular demand” the AFI Silverdocs Festival has added a second screening, Sunday June 17, 9:15pm. Tickets are available here.

In response to the insane amount of demand in the city by the bay, we’ve added a second screening in SF, a 10pm screening at the Embarcadero. Tickets are only available here, so get on it.

The German screening tour last week was fantastisch: great cities, great people, and great events. The day after the Typo event, we had a matinee screening at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Berlin. I was a little blurry from the Typo afterparty (which went till like 6am) but had a great time with a full room of students who’d turned out. The best (or worst) part was that midway through the screening, one of the component video extension cables on the video projector stopped working and everything in the film turned pink. Severin Wucher, a professor at the school and organizer of the event, discovered that if you held the two ends of the cables together and squeezed, the picture went back to normal. So for the last 40 minutes of the film, Severin valiantly held the two ends of the cables together, squeezed hard, and Helvetica played on…

I decided to rent a car in Berlin and drive to the next four German screenings, and then on to Paris. Everyone I met in Germany seemed surprised by this (train travel between cities is the norm there) but I think it makes all the difference. And driving in Europe was a cinch with Sabine along for the trip. “Sabine” is now the official name for the female voice in those satellite navigation systems, coined by Jesse Epstein on the road trip back from the Full Frame festival. I think Jesse was sitting in the back seat, and somehow read “Garmin”, the brand name of the navigation system, as “Sabine”. Jesse proceeded to ask Sabine for advice about the guy she was dating. Sabine responded by telling her to turn left in 500 feet.

Handmade posters from HBK Braunschweig. 10 euro for the series of 3, email jpetri(at)macnews.de

The trip started at the beautiful campus of the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig, where the students made a series of one-of-a-kind letterpressed posters. The screening was lovely, with professor Jörg Petri opening the evening with a powerpoint on why he hated Helvetica. The after-screening dinner and subsequent dance party strecthed far into the wee hours, and at some stage I found myself behind the turntables spinning Grandmaster Flash and Abba. To the crew at the Silverstube… light another sparkler for me.

Then it was on to Bad Homburg for an afternoon screening for the employees at Linotype and a few special guests, including Manfred Schulz, the gentleman who we featured in the opening title sequence of the film setting all that old metal type Helvetica. Manfred used to work for the German type foundry Stempel, one of the licensors of Helvetica and the company responsible for the typeface’s name change in 1961. Also present were Otmar Hoefer and Bruno Steinert, who both appear in the film. Otmar brought a crate of special Bavarian beer from his hometown, so the German revelry continued.

The students in Mainz working the merch

But later that evening I crowned a new champion in the ongoing informal “which school can make the best Helvetica promotional items” battle: the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, Germany. They had the great concept of making a 3-D paper mobile of Helvetica letters and filming the mobile moving and rotating. The video was shown on screen as the crowds came in prior to the film, and an image of the mobile became the theme for their postcards, posters, and t-shirts.

The screening room at KUZ, Mainz

The mobile image was also printed on popcorn bags! And there were people walking the line outside, selling freshly baked Helvetica pretzels! All that, and an amazing venue: the Kuz, a huge converted factory that hosts touring bands and big events. During the screening (I don’t stay and watch the film anymore… let’s just say I’ve seen it a few times already. I usually head to a bar during the screening and come back for the Q&A!) I walked down to the Rhine, where people were hanging out by the riverside as the sun set. Germany in the springtime is amazing. Thanks to Boris Markic and everyone in Mainz for hosting.

The next day I drove to Saarbrücken for a screening the Hochschule für Bildende Künste there. I was pretty excited that there was a laundromat near the school… after two weeks on the road I needed to wash some socks! Saarbrücken is yet another incredibly beautiful German city, nestled into hillsides of trees. After the screening we were treated to some traditional Saarland bar-b-que, prepared on a huge circular rotating grill (I don’t have any pix of this, but it was pretty impressive), and some excellent DJing. Thanks to Soenke, Indra, and everyone at HBK Saar for rocking it.

The next morning I arose at 6am, and Sabine and I started the drive to Paris…