Arial, a con­tem­po­rary sans serif type­face by Robin Nicholas and Patri­cia Saun­ders designed for Mono­type in 1982. If you are famil­iar with a com­puter you must know Arial, one the most used “stan­dard” type­faces for “nor­mal” com­puter usage. Most pro­fes­sional design­ers and typophiles think of Arial as a copied type­face from Hel­vetica and while read­ing the The Scourge of Arial by Mark Simon­son Stu­dio I have real­ized this is in fact a true story.

The type­face became free with the release of Win­dows 3.1, which was a sales hit and Arial quickly gained spread around the globe. The main rea­son why Microsoft chose Arial as stan­dard type­face is because of the license fee from the orig­i­nal Helvec­tia type­face by the Haas Foundry was too high. Missed change to edu­cate the world about the won­der­ful Grostek family.

Arial vs Helvetica

There are sev­eral glyps of the type­faces sim­i­lar and some of them are dif­fer­ent. Due the sim­i­lar­ity Arial is often (unfor­tu­nately) mis­taken for Hel­vetica, the dif­fer­ences between these two type­faces is explained in an arti­cle on iLT, both type­faces are shown next to each other mak­ing it eas­ier to recognize.

• Visit Arial vs Hel­vetica on iLoveTypography

Today Arial belongs to Lino­type as Mono­type Original:

Arial is an extremely ver­sa­tile fam­ily of type­faces which can be used with equal suc­cess for text set­ting in reports, pre­sen­ta­tions, mag­a­zines etc, and for dis­play use in news­pa­pers, adver­tis­ing and promotions.

With­out fur­ther due:

Arial is everywhere!

Pass­ing by an adver­tise­ment by a Dutch web­site about flight tick­ets, noticed the Arial Black at the top, when vis­it­ing the web­site also all other text is designed using Arial.

Adver­tise­ment sign

Dri­ving on the high­way when I spot­ted the Arial here in this adver­tise­ment, it seems to be an Ger­man cloth­ing com­pany using Arial for their logo, the pay­off of Gerry Weber seems to be in a Futura.

Thai cui­sine

Love the Thai cui­sine and went to this small restau­rant in Ams­ter­dam, the win­dow signs and menu is done using the type Arial Black.

High­way truck

Another high­way shot tak­ing while dri­ving… Here is a clear usage of Arial Black italic for the logo and text.

Mirabeau*

A large Dutch inter­net com­pany is using Arial for the illu­mi­nated signs, at first I was mis­lead, Mirabeau* using Arial? I only really rec­og­nized it by the let­ter “R”, vis­it­ing the web­site it seems they have changed the type­face of the logo.

Clear­ing out the garage

Throw­ing away old stuff… And found a small travel rain­coat. Used type­face Arial Black.

Swarzkopf

Say again… Swarzkopf is using Arial? My wife bought some­thing to color hair and while brush­ing my teeth I couldn’t believe my eyes. Quickly went to the store and yes… Swarzkopf is using Arial!

Tommy Hill­figer

Yet another large com­pany is using Arial, this time I found a print on my wife her shoe­box all let­ter­ing is using the type­face Arial.

Kaldi Koffie

This is actu­ally one of the few brand where they con­sis­tently use Arial for all their visual com­mu­ni­ca­tions. This Dutch Cof­fee shop uses Arial for their logo, text and shop­ping branding.

Vehi­cle signage

Wait­ing for the light to turn green, just had enough time to take this photo. This van has some let­ter­ing done using type­face Arial.

Hotel signs

Went ski­ing about two weeks ago and never have I seen that much usage of Arial. Here the hotel used Arial for the name of the hotel and the text.

Get­ting up the mountains

Most of the ski lift in this area (Ischl, Aus­tria) uses Arial as type­face for the name of the ski lift.

Sun ter­ras

Unfor­tu­nately we didn’t have a sunny weather, but when there is you can visit the sun ter­ras. On the doors is placed with etch foil the text “Son­nen­ter­rasse” in Ger­man language.

Ski rental

This shop used Arial for all the visual com­mu­ni­ca­tion, not to men­tion that in this small vil­lage there where three of these shops… Arial is everywhere!

DigiD

Get­ting back and fill­ing out some forms for the gov­ern­ment, in Hol­land there are ways to fill out forms using a dig­i­tal sig­na­ture, called DigiD. I noticed the usage of Arial at the top of this let­ter. Hope­fully this will change towards to new brand iden­tity of the Dutch gov­ern­ment.

UPS

The pack­ages send using UPS are using Arial on their sticker, all infor­ma­tion is printed using Arial.

For sale sign

Due the credit cri­sis many houses are for sale in Ams­ter­dam, the bro­ker puts op V-shape signs with the infor­ma­tion “For Sale”, this bro­ker also uses Arial Black for their name.

Design shop

Every­day I drive pass by this fur­ni­ture shop in Ams­ter­dam, the sell lux­ury design fur­ni­ture, but all the type­face use is Arial Black.

Plum­mer company

This is a large plum­ing com­pany is Ams­ter­dam, they use Arial Black for their logo and other forms of visual communication.

Bike bag

Walk­ing down the streets and spot­ted this printed bike bag which they use to dis­trib­ute fly­ers, type­face used Arial.

License plate holder

Spot­ted this one many, many, many times. A license plate holder for Dutch cars, most of them use Arial to dis­play the name of the garage.

Vehi­cle signs

This plum­mer com­pany uses Arial for their logo and text, designed with icons.

Local cof­fee bar

This local cafe uses Arial Black for their logo on the win­dow, also the open­ing hours and other text is dis­played in Arial.

Avail­abil­ity of type­face Arial

From Iden­ti­font:
Design­ers: Robin Nicholas and Patri­cia Saun­ders
Year: 1990–92
Copy­right: Mono­type Clas­sic Fonts
Pub­lisher: Mono­type
A True­Type ver­sion of this font is pro­vided free with Microsoft Office (Macintosh).

More infor­ma­tion at Lino­type.

Wikipedia

Arial is also a type­face fam­ily com­pris­ing stan­dard Arial (Arial Std) and vari­ants, includ­ing Arial Black, Bold, Extra Bold, Con­densed, Italic, Light, Medium, Mono­spaced, Nar­row, and Rounded. See here for more infor­ma­tion at wikipedia.

So tell me…

This type­face is every­where! Please share and tell me did you have your Arial today?