Inside the Kriterion cinema in central Amsterdam on a sodden summer evening, a birthday party is getting under way. The music is thudding out, skinny-jeaned students are edging their way on to the dancefloor, and the bar staff are run off their fashionably attired feet. Only one thing is peculiar about this event. The entity whose birthday is being celebrated tonight isn’t a person. It’s a typeface.

The film’s creator and director Gary Hustwit, a small-set, close-cropped 42-year-old, smiles at my incredulity. “Oh, that was nothing,” he grins when we meet for lunch the next day. “In Zurich, which was the European premiere, they brought out a huge cake and 800 people sang happy birthday.” Really? “Oh, yeah,” he says, chewing thoughtfully on his burger. “And when we showed the film in Philadelphia there was a giant H made out of Swiss cheese.”

1966 American Airlines logo

If Hustwit looks chuffed, it’s easy to understand why. His first attempt at a full-length documentary, shot on a credit-card budget and made up of interviews with designers and typographers, has somehow become a global phenomenon.

Read on. The article is great geek fun.