Arial is shit and Helvetica hardly works as good on web. Justin Bieber can never be compared to Tony Bennett - he is just not that good technically no matter what popular taste is. (Gulp!) Well however much I'd like to say "to each his own" - still there are good things from mad. So they are the safest thing to do! Different x-height can break your layout! It's easy to work with defaults no matter how bad they are. They are very much same in terms of x-height and other measurements. Safe bet and cross-platform compatibility - Arial was created in image of Helvetica.
Arial is available almost everywhere (~99% Macs and Windows machines have it). Second reason, which makes most sense, is availability.People just don't care/know about design - let alone typography. Gmail also does a great job of typesetting in Arial: GitHub uses Helvetica but on most Windows machines it defaults to Arial and they pull it off very nicely:Įxcept some parts which can be much better with a different typeface: Some popular sites that use Arial and Helvetica nicely: But same amount of effort will yield much better results in other typefaces. Arial.īut there are sites and designers who have managed to make even Arial work for them. It's just a bad copy of Helvetica - a really bad one. ArialĪrial is notorious amoung designers as Microsoft's bastard son (rip-off) of Helvetica. And availability is a big problem on Windows. It is much better than bare Helvetica but again it is not as great as many other typefaces crafted for web. But please do us a favour, don't use it on the web. In fact, most of the brand identities I've created are typeset in Helvetica. It's brilliant for print world, brand identities and maybe even headlines. Just keep reading and you will see the difference. Here is a comparison between Helvetica and Lucida Grande (My favorite typeface). That's something that you cannot do for every word you ever wrote on web. Helvetica almost always requires custom kerning to bring out the best. And all that is well-deserved! Helvetica is one of the best typefaces ever created and is still as relevant as it was when it was created.īut it is a very bad choice for web - especially when you have a paragraphs / chunks of text to typeset. Let me expand on merits and demerits of these defaults: Helveticaįilms have been made and songs are sung in name of Helvetica. Often, no thought is given to design of the site, let alone typography. Some people actually have a reason to use them but most use it mindlessly - just because everyone else does. And Helvetica looks ugly without proper kerning and Arial is just an ugly bastard son of Helvetica. Arial and Helvetica suck on web and for paragraphs of text - they are unreadable (as compared to many other typefaces created specifically for web). Indeed, over the past few years, we’ve seen Google, Apple, Airbnb, and even Coca-Cola all develop their own typefaces–most of which are spiritually similar to Helvetica–for a world in which text needs to scale from tiny to giant without breaking a sweat.Arial and Helvetica are the default font stack for most browsers and for most of the websites. It’s a typeface Apple actually used in iOS and MacOS for a brief period before it created its own San Francisco typeface that has since taken over its platforms. Most notably, it would be digitized in 1983 as Neue Helvetica. Monotoype would refine Neue Helvetica (aka Helvetica Neue) as our digital tools evolved and the needs of displaying text did alongside them. It’s gone through several iterations over the years. Helvetica Now isn’t the typeface’s first major update. The trifecta of micro, display, and text really do feel like they cover everything. Try as I might, I couldn’t break the font. Playing with all of these options on Monotype’s own demo site, cranking up and down the sizes and weights, the typeface feels less like the buttoned up Helvetica you know–which often doesn’t look as wonderful on the screen as you might imagine it in your head–and more like the typographical equivalent of a self-healing cutting board. On top of that, Now features a slew of different weights from very thin to quite bold. “Helvetica Now Micro solves the decades-old spacing and legibility shortcomings” of Helvetica, by splitting the single typeface into three, says Charles Nix, type director at Monotype.