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So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?

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

#161

Post by crowding »

SeoxyS wrote: post #119
rexreed wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree that lower case is trivial due to the level terminal edges in Helvetica. For uppercase, the tip offs are the following: * The capital A in Helvetica is narrower (more isoceles and less equilateral) * The capital G has an extra hatch on the right side (looks like an arrow and not an L) * The capital R does not have a straight leg in Helvetica * Conversely, arial chooses a non-straight hatch mark for the Q wherea…

The perfectly round Os in toyota are the giveaways. I got them all correctly, except for MATTEL for which the only difference is the stroke width; and which I ended up flipping a coin for (incorrectly). That said, I did get a degree in graphic design, so I may not be typical when it comes to this.

In MATTEL, the crossbar of the E is placed in the exact center.

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

#162

Post by neolefty »

jonathanjaeger wrote: post #112

Here's something interesting to do with the same test. Instead of guessing which one you think is Helvetica, choose the one you like better. Then see if Helvetica shows up more times than Arial (or vice versa).

Dangit, I did that and discovered that I prefer Arial! I think it is (slightly) easier to read; it also seems more relaxed and fluid, less unnecessarily squared-up.

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

#163

Post by Trezoid »

navs wrote: post #138
Trezoid wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you should stick with verdana. It's fully cross-platform, designed from the start to be a screen font, and generally looks better. Alternatively, @font-face is supported by just about everything at this point, opening up the opportunity to use much better fonts, like open sans (also, helvetica is a print font. It doesn't work for body copy at the sizes commonly used for screen text.)

Learn something new every day. I've always used Helvetica on all my web pages at the behest of my design co-worker. He's a print designer so it makes sense now.

Suggest he looks at open sans. It's a fantastic screen font that works very well for large headers (especially at a lighter weight), and body copy.

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

#165

Post by nej »

Got a 18 out of 20. To me Arial looks a bit informal when compared to Helvetica. While Helvetica has level edges, Arial feels more loose and forgiving. I use both fonts in Applications but never really looked at them up close until now. Thank your or this test.

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

#168

Post by PeterisP »

navs wrote: post #138
Trezoid wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you should stick with verdana. It's fully cross-platform, designed from the start to be a screen font, and generally looks better. Alternatively, @font-face is supported by just about everything at this point, opening up the opportunity to use much better fonts, like open sans (also, helvetica is a print font. It doesn't work for body copy at the sizes commonly used for screen text.)

Learn something new every day. I've always used Helvetica on all my web pages at the behest of my design co-worker. He's a print designer so it makes sense now.

I hope you do test how it looks on windows? I've worked with a webdesigner that often chose fonts that worked perfectly on his mac, but looked really ugly on all windows browsers, since the fonts were unavailable and the substitutes had noticable style/width differences.

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

#170

Post by martswite »

ef4 wrote: post #4

I really don't consider myself a typography expert or designer, but I found that easy and got a perfect score. There are obvious tells in almost all of them -- mostly lowercase "s", "c", etc, in which Helvetica is has perfectly level edges and arial is angled. The only harder ones are some of the all caps examples like TOYOTA.

the lowercase t is also a giveaway, helvitica has a flat top with arial having a slanted top.
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