For years, I’ve been able ‘eye’ a page and tell whether I was looking at Helvetica or Arial. I never really knew how I knew, but I knew. The designs using Arial didn’t look quite as refined and never seemed to be spaced properly. I think the latter problem stemmed from the fact that ‘proper’ designers don’t use Arial, so it was pretty likely that the page was put together, sans correct leading and kerning, by someone new to design, or someone who just wasn’t very good.

A little history about Arial’s origins — It’s a typeface that Microsoft made ubiquitous when it bundled it with Windows 3.1 and eventually their Mac apps as well. The popular misconception is that Microsoft asked to have Arial created in order to avoid the licensing fees that would’ve accompanied Helvetica’s wide distribution. While the the reasoning is considered to be correct, Arial already existed as part of Monotype Corporation’s list of typefaces.

Helvetica is owned by Linotype and you’d need to hook up with them if you wanted to distribute the face. Since MS didn’t want to go that route, they talked with Monotype about using something similar and settled on Arial because of it’s uncanny match of proportions.

As to why Monotype had a Helvetica knock-off to begin with, I found this:

Like many traditional type companies, Monotype had a number of “similar-to” or analogue designs in their library, dating from the years when type was tied to a specific platform, and each hardware company had to offer the popular designs in order to keep their hardware business viable. However, when they entered the cross-platform world of digital type, Monotype stopped this design plagiarism for a while and focussed on their great collection of classic designs. After a time, it seems that Linotype’s dominance of the PostScript market (due to a more extensive library and to jumping onto the PostScript bandwagon much earlier, as well as owning part of the printer font set) was too threatening, and they decided they had to have core-font equivalents.

The precedent, Times New Roman PS, was easy to justify. When Monotype came out with their first PostScript imagesetter, they were offended at the idea of having Linotype’s Times in the RIP, considering Times originated with Monotype. They prepared a modified version of the original Times New Roman in which the glyphs were fitted onto the widths used in the 12-point Times of the LaserWriter set. I did the Type 1 production for the ROM font.

Several years later, things got more serious, and Monotype created Arial. I’ve been told that the decision to make this an analogue of Helvetica was a late decision by new upper management, but others are certain the direction was there before that change transpired. Monotype had definitely returned to the slipperly slope, and continued with Z-Antiqua.

Anyway, here’s how tell Helvetica and Arial apart.