Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
This forum is in permanent archive mode. Our new active community can be found here.
Fonts and typefaces.
in Technology
I came across this article which inspired me to start this thread.
Are there any typefaces/fonts that you like to use when printing documents? I know that Times New Roman is a pretty popular, simple, and attractive typeface for documentation (it's better than boring Arial, anyway), but if you could change the typeface to save money, would you?
According to the article, switching to Garamond could save millions of dollars as opposed to TNR since it could save lots of ink. I'm not sure, though. Subjectively to me, Garamond doesn't look as attractive as TNR, yet the promise of saving money sounds promising... I'm not sure.
What do you guys think?
Are there any typefaces/fonts that you like to use when printing documents? I know that Times New Roman is a pretty popular, simple, and attractive typeface for documentation (it's better than boring Arial, anyway), but if you could change the typeface to save money, would you?
According to the article, switching to Garamond could save millions of dollars as opposed to TNR since it could save lots of ink. I'm not sure, though. Subjectively to me, Garamond doesn't look as attractive as TNR, yet the promise of saving money sounds promising... I'm not sure.
What do you guys think?
Comments
And Arial isn't even a serif typeface like Times New Roman, It's like saying you prefer a squirrel to a boring pine tree...
But Arial is just an imitation Helvetica anyway.
The US government could also save a shit ton of money by not paying for so many trips. Or they could put an end to security theater at airports.
That said, nearly any serif font is better than Times New Roman. TNR is about the most generic serif font these days due to it being the default font in MS Word going back to 1990 or so (and maybe even earlier on the Mac). Garamond is one of my favorites and a much more elegant font. My wife's a big fan of Mrs. Eaves herself, though.
*PS
About Arial being boring, your face is boring.
As far as it being "boring," well, even its own designer said "It was designed as a generic sans serif; almost a bland sans serif." That may not literally mean "boring," but it certainly was not designed with the idea of stimulating the visual palate of typography.
"but it certainly was not designed with the idea of stimulating the visual palate of typography." do you read what you are posting? "The visual palate of typography" really? are you fucking serious? what are you, the gatekeeper of taste and warlord of kerning?
Arial (and Arial Unicode) is one of the few type faces available in most computers around the world with a large amount of glyphs and characters that looks somewhat decent, albeit proprietary of Microsoft, but available for commercial use and web safe.
Admittedly, I was purposely being a hair pretentious with my language, but the fact is Arial is just meant to be bland and generic (even its creator says so!) and not for any sort of aesthetic appeal. It was also conveniently designed to basically have the same size letterforms as Helvetica so people could use it as a cheaper substitute. If it was a color, it would be beige -- inoffensive and relatively easy on the eyes, but not something that will make you say, "wow, what a bold choice."
Also, Arial is not proprietary of Microsoft. It's proprietary of Monotype. Microsoft (and Apple, and others) licensed it from Monotype. Monotype still owns full rights to it.
The fact that you find it bland it's because you see it everywhere for the same reason as I stated above, in fact, if you don't have Helvetica installed on your PC you are reading this in Arial.
The beauty of Arial is that the font is not offensive, the blandness of it makes it perfect for text and paragraphs, and that is quite hard to pull off, most foundries won't even mess with more than the basic glyphs and characters due to the fact that it's hard to figure out a way for everything to look cohesive, and yet, Arial pulls it off.
Also, most people say Helvetica is the shit and Arial is crap, and most people can't differentiate one from the other.
Again, you can make Arial look good in the proper context, same can be said about any font out there, I really don't think you can dismiss something as boring by itself, you may do so on a case to case basis.
If you want to argue that its blandness is a strength for the reason that it does make things cohesive, that's a point in your/its favor. However, it doesn't make it any less bland. Again, beige is an inoffensive color that tends to go well with nearly anything. If your design wants something to be inoffensive and cooperative like that, then go ahead and use beige. Going back to my wife, who also has excellent color sense in addition to typographic sense, she prefers neutral colors like beige for things such as wall-to-wall carpets so that you can properly "spice" things up with brighter colors as accent pieces. On the flip side, you do not want to use a really "spicy" (for lack of a better term) typeface for the main body text -- just as an accent piece. If you ask her, however, there are many fonts to choose from that are appropriate for large amounts of body text while still being more aesthetically pleasing than Arial. These days, use of Arial (or Times New Roman for that matter) implies any or all of laziness, lack of creativity, or cheapness.
FWIW, she doesn't think substituting Helvetica for Arial is a cure-all either. While Helvetica is more aesthetically pleasing than Arial, it's also not always the best typeface for every scenario. Helvetica itself has been somewhat overused over the years due to being the "cool, hip font" back in the 60s or so. Her favorite sans-serif font is actually Univers, if I remember correctly.
I agree that most people can't differentiate Arial from Helvetica. Those people shouldn't be arguing either way because they don't know what they're talking about. I, however, can.
Again, it's not a matter that if there is a better one out there or not, fact is, Arial can look pleasing to the eye, it just depends on how you use it.
The designers toolkit has ways of making stuff like beige and Arial look awesome, or whatever you want (more with the font, less with colors as those have cultural/psychological implications tied to them) I'm just saying don't discard something so easily.
Also "but it certainly was not designed with the idea of stimulating the visual palate of typography." that kind of language just lights me up every single time, but you already went over that.
Did you try the test btw?
It's not that Arial is hideous -- it's certainly not hideous. It's just generic and bland. It's plain.
Also, you seem to be ignoring the fact that the person who designed Arial said it was designed to be bland and generic on purpose.
Edit: Also, I know designers have ways to make even Arial look good. My wife had to do it when dealing with a customer than insisted on using Arial. It's just that making Arial look good and stand out from the crowd is more difficult than using a more unique and/or aesthetically pleasing font. A skilled driver can handle a stock Honda Civic at higher speeds in tight turns, but nowhere near as easily as if the car was properly manufactured and/or tuned for high speed turning.
EDIT: Lemme get some appeal to authority up in here! Here's the Director of Adobe Typekit, chiming in: