Nice article!

The Mirabeau logo does look very much like your own…

Fun read!
Arial is a much used font, but doesn’t seem to bore me…!

First off I want to say that I’ve only just recently started taking notice of font faces in this level of detail (coder turned designer). The article Arial Vs Helvetica you link to was very informative in compaing the two.

However, I could not help but laugh at half of the commentors in that post. I cannot belive that they can be so over zelous over a type face.

Now that I’ve seen that article I do in fact prefer Helvetica but I have no problem with Arial being everywhere in it’s place it’s still a well designed and profesional type face no matter how you look at it. I dont belive it’s used just cause it’s there.

Thanks Frank - for your comment, indeed the asterix is the same! Didn’t notice it before, I used Franklin Gotic Bold for the *

Hi Vincent - thanks for your comment, I believe that for some purposes Arial is a good typeface, but for most designs (signs) I think that there are better choises.

Thank you Richard - for your comment, just head over over to Typophile and search for Arial, there you will find some strong comments regarding Arial (the devil). In many cases Arial is a typeface that people will recognize, it makes them feel comfortable knowing the typeface. Personally I prefer Helvetica above the Arial.

Do you think that the average user notices the difference though? What do you meen by it makes them feel comfortable? Personally I don’t think that anyone except for fellow designer types will take notice…

I feel your pain, Sander, and can only admire the dedication you’ve shown in snapping passing vans. I think there is a noticeable difference between the two fonts, even to someone not scrutinising the lower case ‘t’: Helvetica strikes me as less angular, slightly warmer.

Regardless of that, a design company really should know better than to use Arial over Helvetica: every designer type will notice.

Plumbers using Arial is wholly appropriate - would you trust a plumber who’d bothered to purchase Helvetica or a Mac?

A quick scan round the house reveals Kellogs uses Arial in its ingredients/small print. Disgraceful.

Well spotted! Thought Helvetica ruled the world, but maybe not ;O)

Nice overview. I must say I never really payed attention to spotting the difference. It makes sense to use Arial for a cheap yet familiar look, like the plumbers. What strikes my attention though is that so much of your examples are capitalised. Both Arial and Helvetica seem very strong and powerful in uppercase. Do any of you type experts dare to make a good judgement whether Arial and Helvetica are indeed used more in upper- than lowercase compared to other font families?

I have no strong opinion between the two fonts, but I do wish there was more flexibility in Arial use when it comes to website design. As a font it’s prevalent because it’s so simple and can be slightly bland - it’s a ‘no danger’ font. But in terms of large bodies of text on screen it’s miles ahead of any of the other web alternatives.

I do think, however, that Arial (and to a lesser extent) translates really well to an all lower case appearance. I’m surprised not to see it used more often in that style.

I believe that is not true Richard - it totally depends on the brand or product you are trying to sell. I believe people will notice the difference and that’s why plummers use Arial and BMW is using Helvetica.

Thank you Leon Paternoster - for your comment, appreciated! I totally agree with you, a design company / designer should think about the typeface they use and Arial is not one of them. What strikes me is your example of Kellogs, as the examples of Swarzkopf above, brands like that have expensive brand managers and design teams and still they come up with Arial.

Thanks cruisy soozi - for your comment.

Hi Sander - thanks for your comment, hope you restored your blog again! Good point, didn’t really notice it before but indeed most of the examples are capitalized. Both typefaces work really well in uppercase, I believe this is mostly due the fact that the individual letters are somewhat boxed, which makes them to work good together. In the other font series Meta and Rotis it is indeed remarkable that those examples are mostly lowercase, so believe you have a point there. Thanks again for your comment, appreciated.

Hi Robin Cannon - thanks for your comment, when it comes to website and typography you might want to take a look at this website Typechart, here you can see how typefaces will work for windows & mac osx.

If your designer does not have Helvetica and uses Arial instead: FIRE HIM!

If you do not have the money to pay a designer and have to use your Windows System fonts in Corel Draw: USE COMIC SANS to show really everybody what’s cooking!

Sorry, but I just had to say this! I really do not understand why a designer should use a ripp-off font instead of the much better original one. Arial is just a very bad designed typo.

Cheers from bonn, germany,
 Oliver

Read this. Arial is a cheater font. “The Scourge of Arial” by Mark Simpson http://snurl.com/elubf

I’m not a big fan of Arial, and agree that Helvetica is much better; however, I think Arial can be used in heavier weights (notice how many of the examples above are Arial Black), and I think Arial Narrow is a better typeface than the standard Arial is. As others have said, all-capital settings are better than those that include lowercase, too.

I used to think that Helvetica was better than Arial because of the way it’s squared off, with so many lines either parallel or perpendicular to the baseline. Since then I’ve seen a bit more Akzidenz Grotesque, and even without those squared-off elements I still like the proportions better than Arial’s. That implies to me that there’s something in the proportions of Arial that just aren’t quite right.

You have typos in your article. They shouldn’t be hard to spot.

GL

I always figured that what i thought was Arial on splashy advertising was some sort of tweaked Akidenz or Helvetica. Especially on logos… but maybe not after reading this.

However, i wonder if Helvetica was licensed by MS — do you think Helvetica would be as popular now or would it be hated because of it’s ubiquity?

On another note - In art school, i remember being a smartass and answering a instructor’s question of “what’s your favorite typeface” with “Arial” to my class’s enjoyment.

LOL, Oliver - I must take this up into the next employees contract Unfortunally on Windows you cannot uninstall Arial, but you can substitute Arial for Helvetcia with this, see also here.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes"Arial”=”Helvetica”

Thanks again for your comment!

Thank you Crystal Olig - for bringing the article to the attention.

Hi Jake Freivald - I totally agree with you that Arial Narrow is far more better than Arial regular. Below you will find a comparison with the various typefaces (click to enlarge). Thanks for your comment, appreciated.

Thank you Thomas Philp - for pointing it out, will check it later.

Hi jack - thank you very much for the backlink, appreciated. Actually interesting point, probably the same discussion with the popularity of Windows vs Mac, what if Mac had ruled the world… (psss… they do;) ) Thanks again for your comment.

Aren’t we too harsh for Arial. In the mentioned article from ilovetypography I found this fragment: “What it’s wrong to do is criticize Arial as a clone or rip-off of Helvetica. It’s not. If Arial is a rip-off of Helvetica, then Helvetica is a rip-off of Akzidenz Grotesk; or we could simply say that they are both rip-offs of earlier Grotesque faces. The whole rip-off debate is a rather pointless one, I feel. Every face should be considered on its own merit. (We don’t criticise a daughter for looking like her mother.)”.

And don’t you think that the subject of a font’s popularity is a bit more complicated. Helvetica is very popular and commonly used (there were many examples in that movie “Helvetica”) (we don’t cirticize it, because we like it), but also Comic Sans is very popular (it’s got really bad reputation because of it’s popularity, and I’ve heard that this is a bit unfair, because it’s a quite good font). Maybe we shouldn’t emphasize so much that Arial is one of the Windows fonts (and we all love mac ), it’s cheap, and it’s just a worse Helvetica, when we want to estimate wether it’s a nice or ugly font.

And about Helvetica - does “When in doubt, use Helvetica” (form “The Scourge of Arial”) sound like a really appropriate rule of good desing? It sounds like: “When you don’t know anything about typography, it’s safe to use Helvetica, because it is said that it’s beautiful font”.

Some doubts I wanted to share  .

It seems that typeface snobbery is still alive and well!

Nice post. This is when you know you’re a true graphic design geek, when you point out the typefaces on ads and packaging

Thank you Michał Czernow - for your extensive comment, very appreciated! I agree with you on the fact that the discussion about rip-off comes down to the rip-off of grotesk faces, this is a pointless discussion. Every typeface stands on its own, but Arial is a exactly based on the Helvetica design which was used by Microsoft to reduce the costs of font licensing.

Most people who use Arial don’t look at typefaces as the type/design community does, I can understand why Arial is popular, its free and Microsoft is large and this makes is easy to use. At my company I sometimes see a adress label printed using Arial, I ask the sending department about it and the answer is “Don’t worry, nobody will notice”. And in fact this is true, Arial is used so commonly you don’t mind the usage.

The fact if its a ugly or beautiful typeface is a very hard question to answer, what if there were more Macs than Window machines?

On and on, I am happy to see that Microsoft made a change to the typeface Calibri (by Dutchman Lucas de Groot) for the replacement of Arial in the applications Powerpoint, Excel and Outlook.

Thanks Jimbob & Lee Munroe for your comments, appreciated.

“Every typeface stands on its own, but Arial is a exactly based on the Helvetica design which was used by Microsoft to reduce the costs of font licensing.”

That’s not entirely true. Microsoft commissioned Monotype to put Arial (a pre-existing font designed for IBM c. 1982) onto Helvetica’s metrics, as you say to save costs. However the money saved was invested in “hinting” the font for the screen. Helvetica was produced to cash in on and improve upon AG’s success. Microsoft wanted to save money, Haas wanted to make money. Judge these motivations as you will.

Interesting post.
Too bad no one bothered proof-reading before putting it up. There are so many grammatical and spelling errors that I couldn’t bring myself to read the entire thing.

I don’t mind Arial. It is aesthetic, neutral and nice font. Of course a little too popular, but if it neutral who cares If I have to choose between Arial and Helvetica I would choose Helvetica. Why? Because both are free, and Helvetica was first

What I love is how many graphic designers moan about the use of this font. As if they have some kind of special intelligence that must be used and this font is to obvious a choice for them.

Reminds me of photographers and the gear you MUST use etc in order to make a great shot. This font has its own look and if used with skill can look great!

Hi Sander,

one of the main reasons Arial is much used is, I think, because of internet:

We all know there are very few fonts that really work on the internet (without using sIFR2.0 or Flash) because allmost everyone has these fonts pre-installed in their Operating System.

So if you want the same ‘look and feel’ in your digital media as well in your printmedia, then arial isn’t such a dumm choice?

Safari does it different: arial in a website (CSS) turns out to be helvetica in this browser (that’s someting to do with the license of the fonts? So I’ve heard ….)

Keep up the great work, cheers and ciao ….

Arial here, Arial there .. i wish people would use other fonts, but because of the limited number of pre-installed fonts on all OS we will have to wait a long time for a higher diversity