

Helvetica vs. Arial Quiz - alanthonyc
http://www.ironicsans.com/helvarialquiz/index.php

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alanthonyc
First, thanks to mingyeow for submitting this link:

<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
Yeah, 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
For Toyota you can tell with the 'o'. Helvetica appears like an almost perfect
circle, Arial is more oblong and oval-shaped.

~~~
tptacek
I thought so too, but when I compare them side-by-side, it's not as obvious:

<http://img87.yfrog.com/i/picture5da.png/>

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tptacek
... and it turns out Toyota modified their O's, and what they wound up with is
actually Helvetica with Arial-like O's.

~~~
compay
Ha. I feel so much better now! ;)

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tptacek
20/20. 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.

~~~
trebor
Lowercase 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.

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callahad
Note: 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
In 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.

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olefoo
20/20 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/>

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.

~~~
nollidge
Aha! 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/...](http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/opencms/export/nr/modules/news/news_1064.html_786229440.html)

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mrduncan
20/20. I've definitely gained a new respect for Helvetica and a hatred towards
Arial after seeing a few of those (3M mainly).

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tjogin
I failed on Toyota. :(

The rest are easy; Helvetica wants every line to have a straight ending, Arial
doesn't.

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alanthonyc
The 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.

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tjogin
I 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.

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eswat
19/20. Mattel kicked my ass.

Now let's see a 3-way quiz between Helvetica, Arial and Akzidenz Grotesk!

~~~
tptacek
Akzidenz is even easier to spot than Arial. A showdown between Akzidenz and
Arial would be hard.

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klodolph
18/20. Everything but Mattel and Toyota. I didn't know Arial was so ugly
before taking this.

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Semiapies
20/20 - 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.

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albertsun
20/20

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.

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synnik
18/20 - Didn't look at the letters at all, just looked at which one had
fuzzier edges, and was therefore likely run through Photoshop more.

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MrRage
All 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.

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jfarmer
Toyota got me!

