7 ms·
Helvetica vs. Arial Quiz
- alanthonyc 17y agoFirst, thanks to mingyeow for submitting this link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=839407 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=839407 I scored 19 out of 20. All caps Mattel did me in. However, one bad thing is that I can now see just how bad Arial is compared to Helvetica and it's very annoying. I really wasn't looking for something else to be anal-retentive about.
- compay 17y agoYeah, that and Toyota were really hard to tell. Anything with a lower-case t, a or r; or an upper-case C were very obvious, and that was most of them.
- amackera 17y agoFor Toyota you can tell with the 'o'. Helvetica appears like an almost perfect circle, Arial is more oblong and oval-shaped.
- tptacek 17y agoI thought so too, but when I compare them side-by-side, it's not as obvious: http://img87.yfrog.com/i/picture5da.png/ http://img87.yfrog.com/i/picture5da.png/
- amackera 17y ago19/20 here. North Face got me, but in retrospect the R should have tipped me right off. Helvetica is a clearly superior typeface, and I'm not just saying that to be cool.
- mtarnovan 17y agoSame for me, got all of them except Mattel. Very interesting to see so many top brands use Helvetica in their logos.
- sjs382 17y agoI also got all of them except Mattel. :/
- jfarmer 17y agoToyota got me!
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- callahad 17y agoNote: You can click on the images instead of the little radio controls to select your answer. Wish I had noticed that sooner. Mattel and Toyota got me. And I found 3M to be absolutely hilarious. Next time someone asks me why Helvetica is better than Arial, that'll be my example.
- tptacek 17y agoIn fairness to Arial, the numbers in lots of faces are not as well-thought-out as the letters. "3M" is a bit of a worst-case scenario.
- tjogin 17y agoI failed on Toyota. :( The rest are easy; Helvetica wants every line to have a straight ending, Arial doesn't.
- alanthonyc 17y agoThe Mattel logo has all straight lines too. I think the correct analysis for this case is that Helvetica has proportional line widths for vertical and horizontal lines.
- tjogin 17y agoI got that on the fact that helvetica's capital A's are tighter, which I think came through better in Mattel than in Toyota. Since then I've also learned that Helvetica's capital O's are almost perfectly round.
- pmichaud 17y agoThe line weight on "M" stays consistent in Helvetica, but it shits the bed in Arial, getting way thicker at the "V" junction.
- tptacek 17y ago20/20. Mattel, North Face, and Toyota were tricky. The hint book: terminals in Helvetica are always straight, and Helvetica has slightly more uniform strokes. In uppercase, C and G are good tip-offs; in lowers, 't' is a dead giveaway. Look again at the two 3M logos if you want to see why designers hate Arial so much.
- alanthonyc 17y agoThe 'C' and the 'R' in Crate&Barrel pisses me off too.
- carterschonwald 17y agoI distinguished between them because most of the helvetica ones look fuzzy for some reason
- trebor 17y agoLowercase R, C, A, and E are also pretty easy giveaways. I don't use MS Office so I lack Helvetica, but it's still quite easy to pick out against Arial.
- klodolph 17y ago18/20. Everything but Mattel and Toyota. I didn't know Arial was so ugly before taking this.
- eswat 17y ago19/20. Mattel kicked my ass. Now let's see a 3-way quiz between Helvetica, Arial and Akzidenz Grotesk!
- tptacek 17y agoAkzidenz is even easier to spot than Arial. A showdown between Akzidenz and Arial would be hard.
- albertsun 17y ago20/20 To tell on Mattel, look at the kerning. See how tight the T and the E are in Arial compared to in Helvetica. The A also looks slightly too far left.
- mrduncan 17y ago20/20. I've definitely gained a new respect for Helvetica and a hatred towards Arial after seeing a few of those (3M mainly).
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- synnik 17y ago18/20 - Didn't look at the letters at all, just looked at which one had fuzzier edges, and was therefore likely run through Photoshop more.
- olefoo 17y ago20/20 is pretty good for someone who's been accused of not caring what font was used so long as it's fixed-width and readable. I actually do have my list of fondest fonts; my current font lust is http://www.clearviewhwy.com/ http://www.clearviewhwy.com/ At $795.00 I really cannot justify the investment to myself, but it would be nice to use the optimized for legibility fonts for display text.
- jeff18 17y agoHa, it's ironic that they use crappy looking rasterized text images for navigation on a site trying to sell a premium font: http://clearviewhwy.com/_images/snav_01_LV-01/01_over.gif http://clearviewhwy.com/_images/snav_01_LV-01/01_over.gif
- nollidge 17y agoAha! Glad to discover the name for the new font along the Beltline in Madison, WI: http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/opencms/export/nr/modules/news/news_1064.html_786229440.html http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/opencms/export/nr/modules/news/...
- MrRage 17y agoAll the Arial bashing is rather boring. Which designer is using Arial over Helvetica when designing logos? Of course Helvetica is the superior choice if those are the only two typefaces that can be used. I dare say most people use Arial on a computer screen, and the only way you're going to tell Arial and Helvetica apart is to use a huge font size. That would be a real test. BTW, I scored 19/20.
- Semiapies 17y ago20/20 - Arial has a lot of odd oblique angles on characters like "3", "r", "G", etc. where Helvetica has horizontal or vertical lines. Toyota was tricky, though.