I like to think that I love good design. Part of that, over the years has evolved into a fair bit of font snobbery. I may have even blogged about fonts before. So, when I saw this comic today, I had to pipe up about a battle Melissa and I have been having. I am totally unabashed in my love of Helvetica. I use it in design, on the blog, and even have watched entire movies dedicated to the typeface.

Melissa, (whom I would also call a font snob) doesn’t like it much because she said, and I quote, “It just looks like the default Excel font.”  (Arial) I mentioned that I liked it still, told her that Arial was a ripoff, and Helvetica had been around for a long time. I followed that up with how I couldn’t tell the difference, but great designers use Helvetica, and accountants use Ariel, because they don’t know the difference.

Well, this has caused a bit of a debate, so I want to pose a few tidbits of information about how to tell the difference. BC, everyone needs to know.

From Wikipedia:

Generic versions of Helvetica have been made by various vendors, including Monotype Imaging (CG Triumvirate), ParaType (Pragmatica), Bitstream (Swiss 721).

Monotype‘s Arial, designed in 1982, while different from Helvetica in some few details, has identical character widths, and is indistinguishable by most non-specialists. The capital letters C, G, and R, as well as the lowercase letters a, e, r, and t, are useful for quickly distinguishing Arial and Helvetica. Differences include:

• Helvetica’s strokes are typically cut either horizontally or vertically. This is especially visible in the t, r, and C. Arial employs slanted stroke cuts.
• Helvetica’s G has a well-defined spur; Arial does not.
• The tails of the R glyphs and the a glyphs are different.

Nimbus Sans, another similar font family that incorporates fonts designed in 1940 (Nimbus Sans bold condensed, Nimbus Sans bold condensed (D)) and 1946 (Nimbus Sans Black Condensed, Nimbus Sans Black Condensed (D)), is produced by URW. Nimbus Sans L fonts were released under the GNU General Public License.

“Helv”, later known as “MS Sans Serif“, is a sans-serif typeface that shares many key characteristics to Helvetica, including the horizontally and vertically aligned stroke terminators and more uniformed stroke widths within a glyph.

When you get to know this font, you really start to see it everywhere. Snowbird, the bank down the street, American Airlines, NASA, and many others.

What are some of your favorites?

Wanted to invite everyone back down to my house for another WordPress Meetup this week. We had a great turnout last time, and though my basement might be busting at the seams, we will do it there again.

When: Wednesday, April 15th, 7:00pm – whenever
Where: My house, 549 W. Goldenrod Way Saratoga Springs 801.376.6898

Topics: Like last time, anything that you want to talk about. I just got a new TV that we can hook up laptops too, so bring your lappy, and examples of what you are working on.

Below are a some of the people that came last time, I hope that you all come again, and bring some friends too!

• Spencer King
• Joseph Scott
• Thom Allen
• Ratish Naroor
• Kathy Griffiths
• Sheila Atwood
• Tami Tanner (+friend)
• Tyrel Kelsey
• Stephen Shaw
• Emily Shaw
• Ash Buckles
• Pete Lasko

Feel free to bring a snack to share, I am thinking about looking for some exotic beverages… If you want to RSVP, just leave a comment letting me know you hare coming. Then I can know how many chairs to steal from the church… Spread the word!

A few weeks ago at the January Geek/Blogger dinner Thom Allen, Joseph Scott, Spencer King and I were all talking about how cool it would be if there was a time when WordPress developers/users/designers could get together and hash out whatever they were working on with the collective body of users. So, in the community nature of WordPress, I decided to put something together for next week. If you are new to WordPress, a seasoned vet, or somewhere in between, you would likely get something out of this meeting. If anything, come for the snacks. I am going to commit my wife to making some delicious bananna bread. (Will you honey?)

Details

Location: Casa de Spurlock (My House)

Time: Wednesday, 18th of March 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Topics: Anything that you want to talk about. I just got a new TV that we can hook up laptops too, so bring your lappy, and examples of what you are working on. If we do have a good response, I will see about moving to a larger location, but we should be ok… (I know, famous last words…)

Event Registration on Upcoming.org

Twitter hash tag: #utwordpress