Sunday, January 28, 2007

Arial or Helvetica

Once there was a typeface called Helvetica.
It was extremely popular.
Later came a software company called Microsoft.
They “borrowed” Helvetica for their operating system and called it Arial.
This inferior typeface is now on millions of desktops all over the world.
Can you tell the difference between the original and the rip-off
in these ten examples?

Take the Quiz.
(If a little unsecure, read this great article first by Mark Simonson.)

Or, play the Game.

Or, follow the discussion over at Noisy Decent Graphics.

3 comments:

static said...

Thank you for this post and for the links, as a future designer is find it very interesting/important to learn about graphic design in the pre-computer era and specially about typography.

I never liked the "t"s in arial, now I know why :D

Anonymous said...

It´s incredible how subtles differences can influence our notion of the text so much! this belongs to the "under-conscious psicologic domain" I guess.. :)

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