5 ms·
If Arial is the scourge of the world outside of professional design, then Helvetica is the scourge of the world inside. It appears on almost every design, every
by nness 11y ago
If Arial is the scourge of the world outside of professional design, then Helvetica is the scourge of the world inside. It appears on almost every design, every logo, every brand. I think it has come to be as bleached and unremarkable as Arial itself.
But despite that, the history of the two types and how they came into existence and captured two unique but significant chunks of the world is a fascinating story.
- to3m 11y agoThe comment that Arial is "a not-very-faithful imitation of a typeface that is no longer fashionable" struck me as odd too. "No longer fashionable"? Well, that may have been the case in 2001. I suppose 2001 really must have been a long time ago! All the designers I've known who've had any interest in type love Helvetica. One even had a sample of it tattooed on their arm. I thought this a touch extreme, but Google image search says it is quite common. (For my part, I always preferred Arial at lower point sizes. At 10pt, it's so attractive - not a pixel out of place! Its own Arial is Arial Unicode, a misshapen imitation that just doesn't sit right. I wonder what Arial Unicode's Arial is. Comic Sans, I suppose.)
- calinet6 11y agoIronic that the article is from Mark Simonson, whose Proxima Nova is, quite frankly, the Helvetica of the Internet age.