This is the question that Hustwit, best known for producing the Wilco documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, set out to answer in Helvetica. The film features interviews with designers, typographers, and critics, interspersed with Helvetica-spotting montage sequences set to a snappy, synth-pop soundtrack.

Though there are a few Helvetica haters among Hustwit's talking heads, most of the designers extol the typeface as clean, legible, and, most importantly, neutral—a font that can efficiently communicate a wide variety of meanings and messages. Helvetica's most enthusiastic proponents perceive in its design a sense of inevitability, as if it were not so much invented as discovered. "It's hard to see how to improve Helvetica," says Matthew Carter, designer of Microsoft's Verdana and Georgia typefaces. "It just seems exactly right."