Once there was a typeface called Helvetica. It was extremely popular. Later came a software company called Microsoft. They ‘borrowed’ Helvetica for their operating system and called it Arial. This inferior typeface is now on millions of desktops all over the world. Can you tell the difference between the original and the rip-off in these [...]

There is a new wicked typography website that allows designers to submit an original design using a font of their choice for a specific date. After submitting the artwork, public voting determines the winning entry which is then added as part of a month’s calendar and appears in the homepage. It all happens at This [...]

It has now been 50 years since Helvetica was introduced. Even if you’ve never heard its name before, you would be bound to recognize the typeface, because you’ll have seen it so often without knowing. We live in such a bloated visual culture that a typical Western consumer is said to see - as opposed [...]

Apple and Microsoft have always disagreed in how to display fonts on computer displays. Today, both companies are using sub-pixel rendering to coax sharper-looking fonts out of typical low resolution screens. Where they differ is in philosophy. Apple generally believes that the goal of the algorithm should be to preserve the design of the typeface [...]

Ugly fonts, cutesy fonts, unreadable fonts, bad fonts . . . they have terrorized us for far too long, infiltrating our homes… this article presents the seven worst fonts-and the people who use them. Read more…

Better known today for being Apple’s main font on their website, iPod and more, Myriad is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Robert Slimbach (born 1956) and Carol Twombly (born 1959) in the period 1990-92 for Adobe Systems. Myriad is a multiple masters face that works with an intelligent software "engine" to allow the user [...]

When Linotype acquired the Helvetica family it was in disarray - two different names for the same version, variations in design features. To make order out of it all they redrew the entire Helvetica family and dubbed it Neue Helvetica (New Helvetica). They also added a numbering system to help identify all the many styles [...]

We’re seeing change in font use and designs in Web 2.0, but these changes aren’t just aesthetic but functional too. So I thought I’d share some insights we’ve had while discussing these trends. Eventhough I’ve narrowed it down to font usage, the trends I see in this artcile obviously apply to all design elements. The last [...]

From the company that popularized Arial, here are three examples of bad typography in Microsoft Word. Bad typesetting in Word finds its way into resumes, business plans, research papers, government documents, even published books. These small inconsistencies and imperfections may be un-noticible in small doses, but paragraph-after-paragraph they stack up - resulting in ugly, visually-incohesive [...]

By my best estimation, at least 1,800 new commercial typefaces were released in 2006 alone. This count does not include freebies, custom and proprietary commissions, or even individual weights. It is a rough tally of the number of new font families released by the major resellers and exclusive foundries last year. If we take this [...]