For various reasons, I’ve been thinking of the Frere-Jones brothers. Firstly, I got in a shipment of magazines from my aunt’s store including an old New Yorker that had Sasha Frere-Jones writing about Mariah Carey and how with the “Fantasy” remix with ODB she invented the whole “male rapper / female chorus” sound that’s so ubiquitous today. Which come to think of it is probably true, that whole sound is such a cliche now. He also writes glowingly about “All I Want For Christmas Is You” as one of the few worth additions to the modern Christmas canon, and it’s nice to know someone shares my opinion of that song.
And then I read in Karen’s blog that Helvetica, a film about the ubiquitous Helvetica typeface and about typography in general is coming out next year, on the 50th anniversary of Helvetica. Here’s a quick description:
Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which will celebrate its 50th birthday in 2007) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.
Pardon me for geeking out, but I’ve loved typography since I was a kid, and this sounds awesome. (It’s by Gary Hustwit, who produced the excellent I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.) The Typographica writeup has a funny line booing the villain Arial (which reminds me of my previous musings on Arial vs Helvetica).
So, yeah, among the people featured are Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones. What a talented pair of brothers, the Frere-Joneses. Just don’t confuse Sasha with Tobias.