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{Arial) It's just a bad copy of Helvetica - a really bad one. It's just ugly. The author mixes personal preference whilst aiming to clarify technically which I

by neya 13y ago

{Arial) It's just a bad copy of Helvetica - a really bad one. It's just ugly. The author mixes personal preference whilst aiming to clarify technically which I am not very fond of. As a designer, if there's anything I learnt, all this doesn't matter. These are basically tools. A good designer will make even the stupidest font (if such a thing exists!) look beautiful. A bad designer will make bad designs no matter what. Remember, a lazy carpenter will always blame his tools. Sure, good fonts give you that extra 'edge'. But remember, right now we don't have a very good way of displaying custom fonts over the web without some kind of Javascript hack or increasing the page loading time by directly loading the font file and/or without having alignment issues across various browsers. Also, there are uneven artificats rendered across font edges in some browsers which only worsens the User experience of using a custom font. Thus you'd be much much better off using arial or the likes of it. Upon reading the author's article you might be convinced that one font is better than the other, but given the time, I can lead you on an infinite loop comparing various fonts side by side saying something is better than Helvetica and something else is better than this something, and so on. The real fact is, when you read content, the font doesn't matter much unless it is pretty bad. So if you read a lengthy article on a blog and if I just asked you what font it was, I'm sure you wouldn't have an immediate answer, unless you are too much into design, etc.[1] [1]In fact, I'd like to present the author (and all of you) a challenge: http://www.ironicsans.com/helvarialquiz/ http://www.ironicsans.com/helvarialquiz/

Osmium 13y ago
[Quiz spoilers] If anyone's struggling with the quiz, key things to look out for are slanted vs horizontal lines (e.g. in 't'), the capital R, and general balance (e.g. the 'O' in Helvetica is more circular). It's the combination of these that make the Helvetica logos, generally, look "nicer." Edit: that said, I challenge anyone to reliably describe which "Mattel" is the correct version!
- js2 13y ago
  Helvetica uses varying widths. Ariel tends toward fixed widths. For other hints, see previous discussion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5086793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5086793
- hfsktr 13y ago
  Even with all those hints in mind I had to look hard to see any of those differences. Only the 'O' was spelled out for Helvetica so even if I saw the difference I didn't know which font it was. I think I got about 6 right. I just can't tell the difference, as is always the case when these font discussions come up. Last time I learned what serif vs non-serif meant though.
astine 13y ago
I agree. One of the more annoying things about people who talk too much about typography and other design topics is that they get locked into orthodoxies which are barely even opinion and certainly not even fact. The classic example is Helvetica vs Arial. The first thing every designer learns about typography is that Arial is just an ugly copy of Helvetica and is to be avoided, but in fact, the difference between the two is so subtle that it really doesn't matter which you choose in most applications. In fact, when it comes to webpages, the fact that both of these fonts are being displayed on a computer screen means that pixelation will hide most of the differences most of the time so that they will really be equivalent. People who see the difference between the two on a website and decide one is better are falling victim to a kind of placebo effect. My favorite example of this was a blogger who was extolling the advantages of Helvetica over Arial one day and showed two bitmapped renderings of Helvetica and Arial back-to-back. He intended this as proof of the superiority of one over the other, but he got the two samples mixed, and I had to point it out. Two samples, intended to show how one was superior, but he couldn't even tell the difference between the two.
- neya 13y ago
  Hahaha! It must have been awkward for him, no? xD Well said dude. I agree with your other points too.

by neya 13y ago

Osmium 13y ago

[Quiz spoilers] If anyone's struggling with the quiz, key things to look out for are slanted vs horizontal lines (e.g. in 't'), the capital R, and general balance (e.g. the 'O' in Helvetica is more circular). It's the combination of these that make the Helvetica logos, generally, look "nicer." Edit: that said, I challenge anyone to reliably describe which "Mattel" is the correct version!

js2 13y ago
Helvetica uses varying widths. Ariel tends toward fixed widths. For other hints, see previous discussion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5086793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5086793
hfsktr 13y ago
Even with all those hints in mind I had to look hard to see any of those differences. Only the 'O' was spelled out for Helvetica so even if I saw the difference I didn't know which font it was. I think I got about 6 right. I just can't tell the difference, as is always the case when these font discussions come up. Last time I learned what serif vs non-serif meant though.

astine 13y ago

I agree. One of the more annoying things about people who talk too much about typography and other design topics is that they get locked into orthodoxies which are barely even opinion and certainly not even fact. The classic example is Helvetica vs Arial. The first thing every designer learns about typography is that Arial is just an ugly copy of Helvetica and is to be avoided, but in fact, the difference between the two is so subtle that it really doesn't matter which you choose in most applications. In fact, when it comes to webpages, the fact that both of these fonts are being displayed on a computer screen means that pixelation will hide most of the differences most of the time so that they will really be equivalent. People who see the difference between the two on a website and decide one is better are falling victim to a kind of placebo effect. My favorite example of this was a blogger who was extolling the advantages of Helvetica over Arial one day and showed two bitmapped renderings of Helvetica and Arial back-to-back. He intended this as proof of the superiority of one over the other, but he got the two samples mixed, and I had to point it out. Two samples, intended to show how one was superior, but he couldn't even tell the difference between the two.

neya 13y ago
Hahaha! It must have been awkward for him, no? xD Well said dude. I agree with your other points too.