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So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?

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21–30 of 91 posts

Re: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?

#21
post #9

Arial: "It was created to be metrically identical to the popular typeface Helvetica, with all character widths identical, so that a document designed in Helvetica could be displayed and printed correctly without having to pay for a Helvetica license." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial

I wonder why they had to make it gratuitously different on top of it. What the hell were they smoking when they made the t and G?

Re: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?

#22
post #2

The bolder one is Helvetica. Got 15/20 after figuring this out from the first question.

Would be good if they didn't tell you the answer after each question... ['t', 'R', 'a', 's', 'S', 'c', 'C', 'g', 'G'] are the easiest to spot IMHO. You can get most of these with the lowercase c alone

By telling the answer after each one they educated me on the difference between Arial and Helvetica. After a coin-flip guess on the first question I got 19/20 right. Now I know the difference.

Re: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?

#24
17/20. I've spent some time studying the differences and could just rocket through them without bothering to even look at the 'c's and 't's. The one that gave me the most pause was digital, and that was one of the ones I got wrong. When you separate the letters, Helvetica loses a lot. The other two I got wrong were also done without letter-by-letter examination.

Helvetica just looks more 'solid' sitting there on the page. Not only is the font a bit heavier, but the kerning is also tighter. Arial's curves and lines look like a 15 year old who thinks anime art is cool drew them.

Arial is an awful font that I wish never had been born.

Re: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?

#26

19/20, fooled by Mattel (and guessed lucky on the other all caps texts). My heuristic was to look at the a, c, e, g, and s, if present in lowercase: are the ends of those characters horizontal (Helvetica) or at an angle (Arial).

18/20, they're fairly easy to tell apart, except for MATTEL and TOYOTA which are quite subtle (and I got wrong precisely because I couldn't remember which is which). Both the capital and lowercase R are a dead giveaway.

Re: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?

#27

19/20, fooled by Mattel (and guessed lucky on the other all caps texts). My heuristic was to look at the a, c, e, g, and s, if present in lowercase: are the ends of those characters horizontal (Helvetica) or at an angle (Arial).

19/20, yeah, the tricky ones are the capitals.

Re: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?

#28
post #9

Arial: "It was created to be metrically identical to the popular typeface Helvetica, with all character widths identical, so that a document designed in Helvetica could be displayed and printed correctly without having to pay for a Helvetica license." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arial

I wonder why they had to make it gratuitously different on top of it. What the hell were they smoking when they made the t and G?

They were smoking possible lawsuits from Haas Type Foundry or whomever was the legit owner Helvetica at the time.

Re: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?

#30

17/20. I've spent some time studying the differences and could just rocket through them without bothering to even look at the 'c's and 't's. The one that gave me the most pause was digital, and that was one of the ones I got wrong. When you separate the letters, Helvetica loses a lot. The other two I got wrong were also done without letter-by-letter examination. Helvetica just looks more 'solid' sitting there on the…

> digital

The lowercase a is a dead giveaway.

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