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"I Have Met Arial, and You, Helvetica, Are No Arial" *

TUESDAY MAY 17 2005 4:00 PM

Submitted by Christopher. Edited By Christopher.

It’s rare but when issues of typography appear in the New York Times, it is always insightful.

Mr. Simonson, who sells original fonts on his Web site, is the author of an online article called "The Scourge of Arial."
Arial, he explains, is a bad imitation of Helvetica. "At a glance, it looks like Helvetica, but up close it's different in dozens of seemingly arbitrary ways." What's odd, he writes, is that an exact copy of that typeface could have been made with no legal consequences because only the names of fonts are really protected.

Where have fonts been? How have they been used? How has a font’s history informed our conception of how it is used? These questions are cornerstones of typography, and (sometimes) typography is the bastard, red-headed stepchild of design.

The best work [a recent graphic design graduate] showed [Michael Bierut, a partner at the graphic design firm Pentagram] was her design for an imaginary CD package. "All of it was Futura Bold Italic, knocked out in white in bright red bands, set on top of black and white halftones," he said. "Naturally, it looked great. Naturally, I asked, 'So, why were you going for a Barbara Kruger kind of thing here?' "

She said, "Who's Barbara Kruger?" He said, "Um, Barbara Kruger is an artist who is, um, pretty well known for doing work that, well, looks exactly like this." She said, "Really? I've never heard of her."

While typography rarely makes waves in popular culture in the same way that Goudy or the Caslons once did, I still think type is one of those things that are surpassingly important because we are constantly interacting with it but rarely acknowledge. Some fonts are so subtle that we take them for granted. Others are...well..."so frilly that you want to stick your dick in them, " as a designer once said.

*PS Title comes from a direct quote in the linked story.

35 Comments

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OctoberSeven

Downers Grove, IL

December 2002

MAY 17, 2005 04:36 PM

rottenart

Norman, OK

February 2004

MAY 17, 2005 04:52 PM

i take it you've been in a typography class or two, chris?

i always thought it was only the certain type of eccentric madman who could devote his life to creating the perfect font. pretty wild stuff. it's like deciding to write a dictionary or something.

Christopher

Portland, OR

November 2002

MAY 17, 2005 05:09 PM

rottenart said:
i always thought it was only the certain type of eccentric madman who could devote his life to creating the perfect font. pretty wild stuff. it's like deciding to write a dictionary or something.

It is exactly like that.

TheFuckOffKid

NEWSWIRE

Australia

MAY 17, 2005 05:12 PM

Shouldn't the title have been: "I Have Met Helvetica, and You, Arial, Are No Helvetica"?

Other than that minor quibble, cool story

black_tar_heroin

I'm lost

January 2003

MAY 17, 2005 05:31 PM

i read the whole thing in a nerd voice, in my head

sadisticmika

I'm lost

July 2004

MAY 17, 2005 05:56 PM

Arial is the font you use if you want to make a Warp album cover, or if you are designing a Ministry of Sound mix CD. ~...

mister_x

Plano, TX

January 2003

MAY 17, 2005 06:11 PM

"so frilly that you want to stick your dick in them, "

i have the restraining orders to prove it.

Prasong007

Durham, NC

February 2005

MAY 17, 2005 06:15 PM

My favorite is palatino linotype followed by times new roman

paulnikon

Melbourne, FL

February 2003

MAY 17, 2005 06:19 PM

Oooooo, a type thread.

Christopher

Portland, OR

November 2002

MAY 17, 2005 06:23 PM

TheFuckOffKid said:
Shouldn't the title have been: "I Have Met Helvetica, and You, Arial, Are No Helvetica"?

Other than that minor quibble, cool story

I am all about the Helvetica (mmm....Helvetica.....) but the title comes from a direct quote in the story.

MistahPrince

Chicago, IL

February 2005

MAY 17, 2005 06:27 PM

I'm a Georgia man, myself.

Good soft font, easy on the eyes.

_biblia_

Tuvalu

March 2005

MAY 17, 2005 06:36 PM

christopher said:

It is exactly like that.

I love typography. I'm a calligrapher on the side.

The Professor and the Madman is one of my favorites ever. Then again, I'm a librarian. I would enjoy a book about a man creating the dictionary. But the part where he tries to cut his dick off? That's just damn interesting.

[Edited on May 17, 2005 by bibliachica]

Punkasswhitegirl

I'm lost

May 2005

MAY 17, 2005 06:45 PM

A girl I was in Printing & Graphics lab with said if she ever had a girl she was gonna name it Helvetica

_biblia_

Tuvalu

March 2005

MAY 17, 2005 07:02 PM

PunkyNatas said:
A girl I was in Printing & Graphics lab with said if she ever had a girl she was gonna name it Helvetica

and this is her brother Gil. Gil Sans!

Attack_Macaque

Mesquite, TX

September 2004

MAY 17, 2005 07:40 PM

Apparently Stanely Kubrick was pretty obsessed with fonts, among other things...

I take a break from the boxes to wander over to Tony's office. As I walk in, I notice something pinned to his letterbox. "POSTMAN," it reads. "Please put all mail in the white box under the colonnade across the courtyard to your right."

It is not a remarkable note except for one thing. The typeface Tony used to print it is exactly the same typeface Kubrick used for the posters and title sequences of Eyes Wide Shut and 2001. "It's Futura Extra Bold," explains Tony. "It was Stanley's favourite typeface. It's sans serif. He liked Helvetica and Univers, too. Clean and elegant."

"Is this the kind of thing you and Kubrick used to discuss?" I ask.

"God, yes," says Tony. "Sometimes late into the night. I was always trying to persuade him to turn away from them. But he was wedded to his sans serifs."

Tony goes to his bookshelf and brings down a number of volumes full of examples of typefaces, the kind of volumes he and Kubrick used to study, and he shows them to me. "I did once get him to admit the beauty of Bembo," he adds, "a serif."

"So is that note to the postman a sort of private tribute from you to Kubrick?" I ask.

"Yeah," says Tony. He smiles to himself. "Yeah, yeah."

For a moment I also smile at the unlikely image of the two men discussing the relative merits of typefaces late into the night, but then I remember the first time I saw the trailer for Eyes Wide Shut, the way the words "CRUISE, KIDMAN, KUBRICK" flashed dramatically on to the screen in large red, yellow and white colours, to the song Baby Did A Bad Bad Thing. Had the words not been in Futura Extra Bold, I realise now, they wouldn't have sent such a chill up the spine.