> And the idea that MS spent a fortune trying to improve the look and ended up with the Arial they did is - interesting. That doesn't match what the article sa

> And the idea that MS spent a fortune trying to improve the look and ended up with the Arial they did is - interesting. That doesn't match what the article says. It says that IBM, not Microsoft, originally commissioned Arial. It mentions that Microsoft may have adjusted the spacing to match Helvetica, but that's all. It also seems to imply that the main reason for creating Arial was to be legally distinct from Helvetica, rather being an improvement as such (though I doubt they specifically wanted it to look worse). Is there some other part of its history that you're referring to here? To be fair, it would be in character with Microsoft to try and improve a visual style and make it worse. They have a treadmill of visual design changes, seemingly just so visual designers and product managers can claim to have make a mark rather than because they're actually better. That results in occasional successes (e.g., Win95 and Win7 compared to their predecessors) and some obvious flops (e.g. WinXP window borders, Win11 taskbar - not an exhaustive list!).