

BBC Advocates use of Arial - dmerfield
http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/gel/typography_01.shtml

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mhd
I understand Gill Sans (isn't it the London underground font?), which isn't
quite common on Windows machines. So it seems to be Arial/Gill instead of the
usual Arial/Helvetica combo…

Boring, but workable. Yeah, I know, Arial bad, Helvetica good! -- never got
any part of that argument. Both are quite boring Grotesques… ( _Still_ waiting
for a high-dpi monitor that can finally end the reign of the _sans serifs_ )

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jinushaun
Arial is "bad" because it's a clone of Helvetica. When MS created Windows,
they didnt want to pay to license Helvetica so they made their own copy of it.
Yeah, I know, under-handed move, but fonts are really expensive. $800 for the
entire typeface--you have to buy italic and bold separately because they're
technically different fonts. In the design world, typeface piracy is as big as
Photoshop piracy.

Apple, OTOH, properly licenses Helvetica.

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mhd
Sorry, but that's simply wrong, both from a legal and typographical
perspective. Arial wasn't made by or for Microsoft, but by Monotype. I'd
assume that licensing it was cheaper than Helvetica, or that you'd get a
better deal if you buy everything at one foundry.

And whether it's a straight clone can be argued, too. Basically it's to
Monotype Grotesque like Helvetica is to Akzidenz Grotesk. It's a bit too close
to comfort for some designers, but there are lots of fonts in that design
space that aren't that different (one of the problem with grotesques). The
shapes of the glyphs don't match, but the general footprint is the same so
that you easily substitute Arial for Helvetica and won't change the flow of
the text. By the way, this is basically the _raison d'être_ for Liberation
Sans, which shares the same metrics.

Also, if it were a straight carbon copy, designers wouldn't complain about the
ugly looks of Arial as compared to Helvetica. Which I never quite got myself,
but then again, I'm not Helvetica's biggest fan.

