Arial is everywhere.
If you don't even know it, I'm afraid you have never used a modern PC. Arial is a font that is familiar to all users who use Microsoft products, both on PC and Mac. In the field of printing and formatting, it is like a virus flooding, which fully demonstrates Microsoft's influence on the world. It is not because of its beauty that Arial is everywhere. It looks very common. However, this is not to say that it is too simple or a bad thing. For fonts, the number of characters and its history are the two most important aspects. What about Arial? The origins are suspicious and contain very few characters. In fact, Arial is not much better than the shameless impersonators.
In the lower half of the 20th century, Helvetica, the most popular font in the Western world, was designed by Swiss Hass foundry in 1950s. Later, Haas mixed Linotype and Helvetica as improvements and added its thickness. As a result, helvetica gradually became popular. As a symbol of the Swiss printing School, helvetica swept across the design world in 1960s and even became a symbol of a modern, progressive, Global View. It has a friendly appearance and clear line, which is once loved by communities and the design world. It is used to print everything in an almost out-of-the-box font. "Helvetica is a widely accepted law. When it became the mainstream in 1970s, many designers began to get tired of it and began to turn to other font styles, But Helvetica has long been integrated into daily design and printing, become an inseparable member. So when Adobe developed the postscript Page Description Language in 1980s, there was no doubt that they chose Helvetica as the authorization for each postscript interpreter. One of the four default basic fonts (the other three are: times, courier, and symbol ). Adobe received the original authorization from Helvetica from the traditional lead foundry, which shows their respect and gratitude for the lead printing and lead foundry. They may think that if they use a replica version of popular fonts instead of the most authentic one, the professional graphic art industry-the most critical market-will not let them go.
At the end of 1980s, the publishing method of the desktop publishing industry reached its peak. Under the guidance of software such as Macintosh and PageMaker, based on Adobe's postscript Page Description Language, everyone can be on their less expensive PCs, make typographical works of almost professional quality. Now the problem arises. There are two types of fonts used for Postscript: type 1 and type 3. the type 1 Font contains "hints" [1] information, which significantly improves the output quality, therefore, it is superior to type 3. Adobe provides materials related to the design of the Type 3 font, but blocks more advanced type 1 technology. Do you want the font type 1? You can only buy from Adobe. All people who want to design or sell fonts have to stop behind the type 3 format. Adobe wants to take full control of the high-end market.
In 1989, many companies tried to crack the type 1 format or invent its alternative products. Apple and Microsoft have signed a cross-authorization agreement to jointly create alternatives to Adobe technology. While Microsoft is working on a page description language called trueimage, Apple has developed the typetype format. Under heavy pressure, Adobe had to release the type 1 format to avoid being overhead by Microsoft and Apple. At the same time, the clone product of PostScript was also developed to compete with Adobe. So we formed a set of things that work like postscript, bundled with fonts that look like Adobe, because their origins belong to Adobe's business partners. One of the clone versions of postscript, birmy, comes with a Helvetica alternative font developed by monotype, which is called Arial.
Arial looks like a loose variant of monotype's older grotesque series, which is repainted to match the proportions and thicknesses of Helvetica. At first glance, it looks like Helvetica, but take a closer look, from which point of view there are many shapes rather than what they look like. However, because the proportion is the same as that of Helvetica, when a document printed to the postscript clone output device specifies Helvetica, Arial can be used to automatically replace it. For untrained eyes, these differences can be masked. After all, most people cannot tell the line font and the line font. But for experienced designers, Rich Little was recognized as Jimmy Stewart.
With regard to Arial, the most strange thing is that monotype does not seem to be satisfied with making a copy of Helvetica, and they can easily achieve and succeed with it, in the past, many printing manufacturers have done several complex versions of Helvetica. Good or bad. In many countries, especially the United States, although the font name is legally protected, the font itself is hard to protect. So if you want to buy a typographical machine and use Helvetica, you must buy a Linotype typographical machine. If you choose a compugraphic, am, or alphatype typographical suite, helvetica is not used. It is triumvirate, Helios, megaron, Newton, or something else. Each printer has its own Helvetica approximate version. It is very likely that most of the so-called "Helvetica" in 1970s were not really Helvetica.
At this time, monotype is a widely respected printing manufacturer with a remarkable history. Perhaps these "hijacking" have been difficult to accept, so they find a reason, fraud claims that this is another design of their "original", but the proportions and thickness happen to be the same as that of Helvetica. In my opinion, this is worse than direct replication. A copy of the copy is very bright. Even if you don't pay for it, you should at least pay for it. What about Arial? Pretend to be different. It tells people that I am not Helvetica. In fact, I don't look much like Helvetica, but I'm glad to wear the same proportion of shoes as Helvetica. -- This is the role it plays.
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When Microsoft uses TrueType as the standard font format for Windows 3.1, they chose Arial instead of Helvetica, probably because it is cheaper and most people do not know (or don't care) the difference between them. Apple was also based on TrueType, but followed by Helvetica and paid the authorization fee to Linotype. Of course, Windows 3.1 is successful. With the success of windows, Arial generated to avoid the cost of the authorization is also popular.
Now Arial has replaced Helvetica. As a non-professional choice, it is used for printing, TV, web ...... Because Microsoft binds it to all places-even on a Mac with Helvetica. This is not particularly important on low-resolution computer screens. It is basically consistent with Helvetica. After all, it is one of the few fonts widely used on the web. Even so widely, there are few professional designers-at least now-using Arial. In the opinion of professional designers, Arial is just a kind of less loyal imitation product that is no longer popular, just like a brand of low-end goods. Occasionally I heard that the designer used Arial because the customer insisted on using it. Because the customer needs to maintain consistency with the appearance of the original product, they used the Arial included in windows. To be honest, choosing Arial is just because it is cheap, not because it is a good font.
For a long time, I myself have been one of the fans of Helvetica. The fact is that Helvetica was successful because of its own advantages, but Arial's success was like a parasite-eventually destroying the host. I have heard the voice of a young designer in my ear: Helvetica? Is that the font that looks a bit like Arial, right?
[1] hints: (from http://www.typenow.net/glossary.htm) when a character is defined by the outline format (outline Format), it is not limited to what resolution is displayed, even if it is increased by 10 times, it will not be different from the original. However, in practical use, to convert the character appearance on paper, you must use a grating image processor (raster image processor) (RIP) tool. Rip constructs the font shape through small blocks. These small blocks are called picture elements, that is, pixels (pixel ). The problem is that pixels are fixed in size and only black and white. Just like on a painting drawing, the rows and columns are small squares (like pixels). Draw a big 'O' in the center of the painting drawing ', all the squares involved in O are black. Isn't the black squares form the shape of the o you painted? This is the case with low resolution (300 dpi. Hinting is to try to draw the effects on the pixel mesh in every way, try to be as close as possible to the effect defined in the font outline. No matter how rough the grid is, make it produce the most satisfying and easily recognizable characters.
