It Takes All Types

A roundup of reading about typefaces and type characters for your weekend amusement.

Minnesota type designer Mark Simonson addresses "the scourge of Arial":

Despite its pervasiveness, a professional designer would rarely—at least for the moment—specify Arial. To professional designers, Arial is looked down on as a not-very-faithful imitation of a typeface that is no longer fashionable [i.e., Helvetica]. It has what you might call a "low-end stigma." The few cases that I have heard of where a designer has intentionally used Arial were because the client insisted on it. Why? The client wanted to be able to produce materials in-house that matched their corporate look and they already had Arial, because it's included with Windows. True to its heritage, Arial gets chosen because it's cheap, not because it's a great typeface.

Simonson also provides a handy guide to distinguishing Arial from Helvetica. (Hat tip: Kottke.)

From Adobe's Type Topics, a consideration of the ampersand in all its variety:

Ampersand usage varies from language to language. In English and French text, the ampersand may be substituted for the words and and et, and both versions may be used in the same text. The German rule is to use the ampersand within formal or corporate titles made up of two separate names; according to present German composition rules, the ampersand may not be used in running text.

Did you know that the Poetica typeface family (created by an Adobe designer) contains 58 different ampersand characters? I didn't.

It turns out that's not all I didn't know about type. The Rather Difficult Font Game lives up to its name; I scored a humbling 22 out of 34. And to think I used to draw a paycheck as a typesetter. (Hat tip: Dynamist.)

"Down with Arial" handbill graphic from Fawny.org.

Comments

[Orange]

I scored 28 but can't do any better than that unless I pay closer attention to my wrong answers. Typeface namers often do a great job at capturing some essence of the font in a way that resonates. Or so it seems. I could be completely wrong.

[Nick Tata]

Only one font from the entire list in Windows can be used for kids ABC workbooks. What is it?

[John Russell]

I'll admit to being a big fan of arial. That's because it's very clear and easy to read. When you put a script in front of a voiceover, my contention is that they'll make fewer mistakes reading arial than any other typeface.

Try printing in a selection of typefaces and then faxing the results over a bad line. Again I contend that if you want to maximise the chance of it being readable, use arial.

If your belief is that 'form should follow function', then it can only be arial.

The only time when, arguably, this does not apply is when teaching children to read. In this case a typeface with a round 'a' (without the curly top) is preferred by teachers.

Last: is it only me that pronounces Arial with a hard 'A'? Every designer seems to call it 'aerial'. But then, as I've said before, to spell seems to be not very high up in the required skills of graphic designers.

[Nick Tata]

Century Gothic is the only Windows font with the round 'a'with a straight back and a lower case 't' and 'f' that manage to end without a tail.
By the way , I dropped in at the local pub on my way home. I started thinking about this blog and fonts. Suddenly, the labels on the bottles behind the bar came into focus. Almost every bottle seemed to have its own distintive personality. What a collection of fonts, type settings and graphics! From now on I'll be looking at those bottles with "new eyes". ( sorry if this topic has been mentioned before!)