Matt McInerney

This is a follow up to the last post titled “Don’t Use Arial.” This a little explanation as to why I would say a thing like that. Refer to the image above to see what I’m talking about.

1. “Keming.” When Monotype attempted to redesign Helvetica (and created Arial), they abandoned Helvetica’s strict adherence to 90 degree terminals. That’s why you run into problems with Arial, like when a lowercase r and n are placed next to each other. The modified terminal at the top of the r almost touches the letter next to it, thus creating some keming. Notice this isn’t a problem in Helvetica. The terminal at the top of the lowercase r ends at a 90 degree angle and allows space for the next letter to breathe.
2. The uppercase R in Helvetica is beautifully crafted. It lives almost entirely within it’s own bounding box, with a slight slight swash at the bottom right that creates the negative space needed for a lowercase letter like o, a, or e to fit in. In Arial, the R extends a bit further outside it’s bounding box and creates a difficult kerning job for almost any letter following. The uppercase R in Arial just look like it belongs in a completely different typeface. Perhaps it should have just stayed in Frutiger, where it works.
3. The negative space problem. The uppercase G in Arial is just another example of how Arial fails when it comes to negative space. In Helvetica, the uppercase G includes a stroke that grounds the letter and fits in perfectly with the parallel 90 degree angle of the next letterform. In Arial, that stroke is dropped and you end up with a G that is seemingly floating above a baseline. This style of G can be executed well in a neutral sans-serif face (check out the G in Univers for example), but it involves carefully crafting the bottom to give it some much needed weight and allows for some nice negative space between it and the next letter.
4. Arial abandons the rules. There are instances in graphic design where tossing the rules out the window becomes acceptable (I’m not a huge David Carson fan, but he has seemed to make it work), but when it comes to redesigning Helvetica, throwing the rules out just looks sloppy. The 90 degree rule in Helvetica is a huge piece of why it works. The 90 degree rule is: all terminals end at a 90 degree angle. In Arial, the rule is only applied at times. At other times, terminals end in 25 degree angles, as is the case with the uppercase C. Sometimes they end in 60 degree angles like the lowercase r. This sloppy application only really leads to problems, like in example number one.

Now I’m not saying Helvetica is the perfect typeface. I know there are a lot of people that love Helvetica and a lot of people that are sick of it. I’m just saying that when it comes to picking a typeface that looks like Helvetica, pick Helvetica. Don’t use Arial, and I hope I’ve made it pretty clear why. While Arial may be a typeface in it’s own right, the only reason for it’s existence, is a case of Microsoft not wanting to pay licensing fees (I know, I can sense the irony too). Arial was just designed to fit within the same letter widths without applying all the rules that make Helvetica work.