Blue Pencil no. 18–Some history about Arial(paulshawletterdesign.com)
paulshawletterdesign.com
Blue Pencil no. 18–Some history about Arial
https://www.paulshawletterdesign.com/2011/09/blue-pencil-no-18%e2%80%94some-history-about-arial/
16 comments
Very interesting tidbits on the history of Arial.
My line of work often makes me share editable word processor documents with clients. I love Helvetica, but I have a strong dislike of Arial. In fact if I could choose I would use something similar to Frutiger or Myriad as a sans-serif. But when I have to prepare such documents with a sans-serif font, I always use Arial, because it looks decent enough, and everyone is almost guaranteed to have it. Nothing shiny, but a good workhorse.
My line of work often makes me share editable word processor documents with clients. I love Helvetica, but I have a strong dislike of Arial. In fact if I could choose I would use something similar to Frutiger or Myriad as a sans-serif. But when I have to prepare such documents with a sans-serif font, I always use Arial, because it looks decent enough, and everyone is almost guaranteed to have it. Nothing shiny, but a good workhorse.
Fonts are a weird corner of perceptual psychology. They have such tiny variations but for people who care about these things, the aesthetic difference between Helv and Arial is huge. (I suspect many people are font-blind, at least consciously.)
Your reactions are typical, and match mine, but I'm not sure anyone really understands why those reactions exist. And the idea that MS spent a fortune trying to improve the look and ended up with the Arial they did is - interesting.
The other weirdness is that the origin font of both Helv and Arial - Bauer's Venus - was released in 1907, and Akzidenz, which preceded it, was released in 1898. Venus Bold Extended was a signature font of the 50s & 60s, but it was already more than 40 years old by then.
The definitively modern sans/grotesque aesthetic literally has Victorian roots.
Your reactions are typical, and match mine, but I'm not sure anyone really understands why those reactions exist. And the idea that MS spent a fortune trying to improve the look and ended up with the Arial they did is - interesting.
The other weirdness is that the origin font of both Helv and Arial - Bauer's Venus - was released in 1907, and Akzidenz, which preceded it, was released in 1898. Venus Bold Extended was a signature font of the 50s & 60s, but it was already more than 40 years old by then.
The definitively modern sans/grotesque aesthetic literally has Victorian roots.
> And the idea that MS spent a fortune trying to improve the look and ended up with the Arial they did is - interesting.
That doesn't match what the article says. It says that IBM, not Microsoft, originally commissioned Arial. It mentions that Microsoft may have adjusted the spacing to match Helvetica, but that's all. It also seems to imply that the main reason for creating Arial was to be legally distinct from Helvetica, rather being an improvement as such (though I doubt they specifically wanted it to look worse). Is there some other part of its history that you're referring to here?
To be fair, it would be in character with Microsoft to try and improve a visual style and make it worse. They have a treadmill of visual design changes, seemingly just so visual designers and product managers can claim to have make a mark rather than because they're actually better. That results in occasional successes (e.g., Win95 and Win7 compared to their predecessors) and some obvious flops (e.g. WinXP window borders, Win11 taskbar - not an exhaustive list!).
That doesn't match what the article says. It says that IBM, not Microsoft, originally commissioned Arial. It mentions that Microsoft may have adjusted the spacing to match Helvetica, but that's all. It also seems to imply that the main reason for creating Arial was to be legally distinct from Helvetica, rather being an improvement as such (though I doubt they specifically wanted it to look worse). Is there some other part of its history that you're referring to here?
To be fair, it would be in character with Microsoft to try and improve a visual style and make it worse. They have a treadmill of visual design changes, seemingly just so visual designers and product managers can claim to have make a mark rather than because they're actually better. That results in occasional successes (e.g., Win95 and Win7 compared to their predecessors) and some obvious flops (e.g. WinXP window borders, Win11 taskbar - not an exhaustive list!).
> not an exhaustive list!
... that (then) newfangled translucent look with Vista (yuck).-
... that (then) newfangled translucent look with Vista (yuck).-
May I suggest Linux Biolinum in the "if I could use" category. Very elegant and readable.
While Biolinum is certainly free to use, install, and download, not everyone has it on their computers. Besides that, and from a subjective standpoint, I don't like it very much. (Libertine is great as a serif font, though).
Even though I don't like it, Arial at least is almost guaranteed to exist on a destination device. An added plus is that is very well hinted, thus making it very readable at almost every font size on screens.
Even though I don't like it, Arial at least is almost guaranteed to exist on a destination device. An added plus is that is very well hinted, thus making it very readable at almost every font size on screens.
> would use something similar to Frutiger or Myriad
Noted. Will try them :)
Noted. Will try them :)
we're deep in off-topic territory, but maybe you'll find useful the LaTeX Font Catalogue. It's for LaTeX, but you can get and install all those fonts system-wide. Here's the link for the sans-serif fonts:
https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/sansseriffonts.html
https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/sansseriffonts.html
Really appreciate it. Will definitely check it out.-
I spent several years with DCF, Document Composition Facility, and markup languages - including one of my own. At Xerox I worked on software to enable DCF output on Xerox printers.
Much preferred Optima to the sans serif fonts.
Printer and screen resolution have a large effect on the appearance of fonts. Low resolution favors sans serif, but Garamond was pretty good on earlier IBM laser printers.
Much preferred Optima to the sans serif fonts.
Printer and screen resolution have a large effect on the appearance of fonts. Low resolution favors sans serif, but Garamond was pretty good on earlier IBM laser printers.
Side thought: At what point (if ever) will AI generation be used to algorithmically generate fonts on the fly, for your particular preferences, or, even - in order to present content in the way most absolutely likely to influence you?
The money Microsoft paid mostly went to the _man-years_ of development effort towards hinting, so if Helvetica had been chosen, that would have been even more expensive.
There were several reasons not to choose the Linotype design Helvetica:
- Linotype had recently sued Microsoft for trademark infringement over the "Tms Rmn" and "Helv" pixel fonts, and that loss still stung
- Helvetica was being used by, and quite strongly associated with Microsoft's direct competitors Apple (it was a core font on the Apple Laserwriter, and even folks w/o access to those outlines would often use the quite nice pixel fonts of the various sizes of Helvetica and even more so with NeXT, since it was used as the UI font on NeXTstep (so as to better showcase their large/high resolution (for the time) screens _and_ it was part of their brand identity.
EDIT: For an example of a company cheaping out on licensing Helvetica (and Times Roman), look to Adobe, Adobe Acrobat 4 which swapped in Times New Roman PS and a matching Arial in lieu of Linotype's Times Roman and Helvetica.