

Arial Font is Bullshit - taitems
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwuFCBwVYFw

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ugh
Arial’s R is so incredibly ugly.

Monotype should have sticked closer to the original. They are not exactly a
sleazy company, so they presumably felt like they had to change a few things
here and there. Other foundries were not so considerate and sold straight
Helvetica knock-offs which looked exactly like the original.

Arial is not bullshit, but it sure would have been nice if Windows would have
come with nicer default fonts from the beginning. Helvetica is fine, if a bit
bland and old-fashioned. Yet it would not have been much of a improvement on
Arial.

(Nowadays Windows is doing much better. Windows comes with quite a few
seriously beautiful fonts which are optimized for usage on screen and are all
original creations just for Windows. ClearType is also very good if a bit rude
to the fonts. Love for typography still doesn’t seem to permeate everything
Microsoft does, though. I routinely catch them using the wrong quotations
marks.)

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jrockway
Arial has a better license than Helvetica. Ability to reuse freely is more
important than intrinsic artistic value. Helvetica is the font for the rich
and wealthy; Arial is the same for the rest of us.

Personally, I don't like Helvetica except in logos that start with A.
(American Airlines and American Apparel have good Helvetica logos. Outside of
that, though, it doesn't excite me.)

~~~
dtf
_Helvetica is the font for the rich and wealthy; Arial is the same for the
rest of us._

Quite. Microsoft did the world a great favour - flaws and all. Arial is The
People's font, and one of these days someone cool and respected may even make
a film about her.

~~~
naner
<http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/family.aspx?FID=8>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web#Program_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web#Program_termination_and_software_licence_agreement_issues)

The fonts are technically not "free" anymore.

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rriepe
A college professor once gave me some great advice: "Never fall in love with a
typeface."

She definitely wasn't talking about font elitism, but I think it applies there
too.

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chaosmachine
I think Helvetica would be almost as reviled as Arial if it was the standard
on Windows.

~~~
mortenjorck
Maybe if Helvetica were also an attempt to re-create a classic Swiss Modernist
typeface without paying licensing fees by arbitrarily making a bunch of
frequently inconsistent and aesthetically questionable stroke changes, yes.

I don't think Calibri will be disliked anywhere near as much, being an
original, with more of an elegant nod to classic humanist types like Frutiger
rather than a passive-aggressive attempt to emulate-but-not-fully.

~~~
rms
So what's a good Swiss Modernist typeface I should use instead of Helvetica?

~~~
teye
This isn't so much an alternative to Helvetica as an improvement upon it, but
I mention it here because some of you may like to see it.

Haas Unica: the lost successor to Helvetica, no longer available because of
licensing issues, but subtly refined by the same foundry after decades of
experience with the original in an attempt to create the ultimate sans serif.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/bauldoff/2389110985/>

Univers + Helvetica = Unica

~~~
george_morgan
I own a digitisation of Unica, acquired many moons ago. It is rather nice.
There’s not much more to say, I’m mostly just showing off.

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Zev
My biggest problem with Arial is:

    
    
      font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    

Most (something like 99%?) of computers come with Arial. So, even the ones
that have Helvetica installed as well, will get Arial, since its listed first.
It seems like a waste to even list it in that order.

~~~
ugh
You could try:

    
    
      font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif;
    

Helvetica has some weird anti-aliasing issues on Windows PCs (don’t know which
versions exactly) so you shouldn’t use it there anyway. Pretty much everyone
using a Mac has both Helvetica and Helvetica Neue, so it’s no problem using
Neue there.

~~~
Zev
Well, when I'm writing CSS, I do that. But, thats not the case for a very
large majority of the sites out there online. So, I'm wondering if there's any
actual reason behind Arial, rather then Helvetica being first (besides the
obvious "more computers have it").

~~~
isleyaardvark
In Dreamweaver the font stacks all have Arial in front of Helvetica. So
there's another reason to dislike Dreamweaver.

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faramarz
Arial is great for smaller text. It's made specifically for screen text in
11px-14px range.

I love Helvetica but I think this video is bullshit.

~~~
houseabsolute
I think the video was being satirical. "I . . . sound insane don't I?" That's
what he said toward the end.

~~~
faramarz
Well he did get on the front page of HN and probably a few hundred views on
utube. That's whats bullshit about it really :P

~~~
taitems
He does also work for the Australian ABC and their radio network Triple J
(this was probably made for JTV).

~~~
JacobAldridge
Actually, made for ABC1 the main ABC free-to-air station. Hungry Beast is
supported (funded?) by Andrew Denton who still waves a reasonably sized stick
around public broadcasting down under. The show probably rated in the mid
100,000s, so YouTube and HN views aren't a primary focus.

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cemregr
Arial isn't a copy of Helvetica. It more closely resembles the predecessor to
Helvetica, Akzidenz Grotesk.

~~~
handelaar
In this version of events, is the fact that Arial's kerning tables match
Helvetica's _exactly_ just an incredible coincidence?

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pan69
Then use Helvetica. What's the point?

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tomek
some ppl have 2 much time on their hands

~~~
george_morgan
And on the opposite end of the spectrum, you apparently lack the time for
vowels.

