![]() Adobe provided information on making Type 3 fonts, but kept the secrets of the superior Type 1 font technology to itself. Type 1 fonts included “hints” that improved the quality of output dramatically over Type 3 fonts. There were two kinds of PostScript fonts: Type 1 and Type 3. Led by the Macintosh and programs like PageMaker, and made possible by Adobe’s PostScript page description language, anyone could do near professional-quality typesetting on relatively inexpensive personal computers.īut there was a problem. They perhaps realized that if they had used knock-offs of popular typefaces, the professional graphic arts industry-a key market-would not accept them.īy the late eighties, the desktop publishing phenomenon was in full swing. ![]() Adobe licensed its fonts from the original foundries, demonstrating their respect and appreciation for the integrity of type, type foundries and designers. So in the early ’80s when Adobe developed the PostScript page description language, it was no surprise that they chose Helvetica as one of the basic four fonts to be included with every PostScript interpreter they licensed (along with Times, Courier, and Symbol). “When in doubt, use Helvetica” was a common rule.Īs it spread into the mainstream in the ’70s, many designers tired of it and moved on to other typographic fashions, but by then it had become a staple of everyday design and printing. With its friendly, cheerful appearance and clean lines, it was universally embraced for a time by both the corporate and design worlds as a nearly perfect typeface to be used for anything and everything. More weights were added and it really began to catch on.Īn icon of the Swiss school of typography, Helvetica swept through the design world in the ’60s and became synonymous with modern, progressive, cosmopolitan attitudes. Later, Haas merged with Linotype and Helvetica was heavily promoted. It was developed by the Haas Foundry of Switzerland in the 1950s. Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, one of the most popular typefaces in the western world was Helvetica. In fact, Arial is little more than a shameless impostor. Arial, however, has a rather dubious history and not much character. With typefaces, character and history are just as important. Not that homeliness is necessarily a bad thing for a typeface. ![]() It has spread like a virus through the typographic landscape and illustrates the pervasiveness of Microsoft’s influence in the world.Īrial’s ubiquity is not due to its beauty. Arial is a font that is familiar to anyone who uses Microsoft products, whether on a PC or a Mac. If you don’t know what it is, you don’t use a modern personal computer. The best alternatives fonts similar to Arial:Ĭlick on images to be taken to download pages.Arial is everywhere. Over the years I‘ve searched for fonts that we’re equally as good and professional as Arial but just a little different and here’s the pick of the bunch. Only recently did I come across Arial Narrow which really diversifies Arial into a contemporary font.ĭespite that, Arial is and may always be seen as the “standard monotonous” font that no client or designer really wants to use unless they have to but there’s actually not a lot of good alternatives if you really want something as clean cut and conservative as Arial. ![]() Because of that a certain monotony also grew with it and most people today mention Arial as the font not to use.Īrial is a fantastic and well-designed font making corporate brochures, logos and typesetting legible, contemporary and best of all functional. It became the standard for MS Word and web browsers thanks to Microsoft so it’s been overused as a font but Arial was never selectively overused.Īrial was just the font that loaded up first and hence why people just used it. It was Designed by Monotype and even the designer himself (Robin Nicholas) said it was to be a “bland sans-serif”. Debuting in 1982 on an IBM computer was the Worlds most famously boring font called Arial. ![]()
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