Tickets for the Washington DC-area premiere at the AFI Silverdocs Festival on June 16 are now on sale. Go get ‘em.

Update: Advance tickets for this event are now sold out. There should be rush tickets available at the door, check Silverdoc’s site for details on how to rush, and get there early.

Berlin was the center of the design world last week, with the latest edition of FontShop’s annual Typo event. Although the event centers around type, each year features a theme, and this year’s was music. The curators stayed on-target with three days of music and type-themed panels and presentations. Who knew there were so many type designers that are also musicians? (Hans Reichel, Wolframm, The House Industries guys, Rob Meek). Obviously graphic design plays a huge role in album cover art, and there were several presentations on the subject, including one from Kim Hiorthoy, who also contributed music to Helvetica.

I also (reluctantly) got into the act, by doing a panel about the making of the film in which I focused on the soundtrack. What does Helvetica sound like? I also talked a little about my background in music, punk rock, DIY creative action, surfing, and other miscellaneous topics. I’d never done one of these Powerpoint-style presentations, and hopefully won’t have to again. But it was pretty hilarious looking out from the stage at 300 people while I blasted Black Flag’s “Rise Above” at full volume, followed by Sonic Youth’s “Catholic Block”. I’m not sure what that had to do with the making of the film, but it sure was fun.

The closing event of Typo was the German Premiere of Helvetica. 1,000 people descended on the Cinestar Cubix theaters for the event, which was sponsored by Linotype. That’s a new attendance record for the film! Although we couldn’t fit everyone in one room… 750 were in the main theater, and 250 in a second overflow screen. Verdammnt!

Thanks to Viktor Nuebel and the team at FontShop for organizing a great weekend.

FontShop’s Stephen Coles and Yves Peters at the premiere

1,000 people + free Proseco (thanks Linotype!) + a small foyer

The series of Helvetica-themed food items continues with this delicious letterform at the sold-out Philadelphia screening at Westphal College at Drexel last week. (And of course, it’s Swiss cheese.) Thanks Westphal!

Tickets for the Chicago Premiere event June 15th at the Siskel Center are now on sale. I’ll be there to introduce the 6pm and 8:15pm screenings on the 15th, and do Q&A’s after. These will go quick, get on it.

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…

PDX Fest in Portland is a documentary and experimental film festival started by Matt McCormick, filmmaker and founder of DVD label Peripheral Produce. In its 11th year, the festival showcased a deep range of shorts and features, including a tribute to the late filmmaker Helen Hill.

The Helvetica screening was sold out and we had our biggest single room ever, 475 people. A bunch of my old friends from the San Diego days came out as well. Props to Bill, Saul, and Greg O’Dell, and sorry you couldn’t make it Dede! More props to AIGA Portland and Extensis for helping fill the seats.

The closing party at the Moon and Sixpence was good fun, with David Carson making another rare appearance to join in the debauchery. PDX Fest head honchos Gretchen and Matt were exhausted but happy to hoist a few pints in celebration:

Thanks to everyone who came out to the show, eveyone at the festival, and to Cat Tyc and the boathouse crew.

With all the time I’m spending waiting around in airports lately, you’d think I’d at least be up to date with my blogging. Alas, ’tis not to be. So here’s a few catch-up posts from the past week of the tour:

We had two packed screenings at the old Main Beach Theater in Laguna Beach… a place where I used to take dates in high school! And we even shared a marquee with (and out-grossed) Blades of Glory. Nice. Thanks to everyone at LCAD and AIGA OC for organizing the event.

We also screened at USC the following night, where they had what has now become somewhat of a tradition: the Helveticake. Instead of adhering to Modernist cake design principles, the bakers boldly chose to decorate the letters with Postmodern sugar swirls, polka dots, and other ornamentation banned in Basel. Somehow I managed to blow out the candles on all 9 letters…

Matthew Carter and I participated in a very nice discussion the following day. It was supposed to be about Helvetica, but as I’m a little bored discussing it, we turned it into a more of a Matthew Carter interview, with me doing my best Charlie Rose impression. Here’s Matthew getting stalked for an autograph afterwards:

Special thanks to the USC Design Department for hosting. No thanks to the USC AV department though (long story)…

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.