Type is everywhere. Duh. If you don't know that, you're not paying attention. But, ever since a little film called <em>Helvetica</em> it seems like people can't miss the opportunity to bring it up. PBS Arts piles on with a very sweet, if not terribly insightful, mini-doc. At least it's short. Maybe you can get your clients to watch it.

Estimate time to read this page: 2 – 2 minutes

Featuring: Jonathan Hoefler, Tobias Frere-Jones, Paula Scher, Eddie Opara, Julia Vasker, Deroy Peraza
Recommendation: Eh, watch it. It’s only 7 minutes of your life.

There’s a sweet little mini-documentary floating around the Internet about typography, its use, and it’s public profile. There’s really no new content here, especially if you’ve seen Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica, but that doesn’t make it any less entertaining. Plus, to my recollection, Gary’s doc doesn’t have Jonathan and Tobias from H&FJ, or Eddie Opara in it, and I always like to see new interviews with people I haven’t seen before. It’s only fitting that the fine gents from Hoefler & Frere-Jones are in it, given that they’ve designed some of the most influential, beautiful, and unfortunately overexposed typefaces of the last, I dunno, 5-10 years?

I’ve embedded the video below for your convenience. Have a look.

One question:
Is that really the definition of a font? I understand it comes from the same french root as fondue, meaning a thing that has been melted, and I had been lead to believe that in digital type parlance the word Typeface referred to a single weight (roman, bold, oblique, etc…), a Family was a group (like Archer or Gotham) and a Font was the software. Thinking about it, I think this comes from my understanding of font licenses, which is a software license, not a license for the art part (the shapes of the letters, etc).

Anyone want to set me straight?