{"id":109,"date":"2009-04-24T22:32:29","date_gmt":"2009-04-25T02:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nscadesign.ca\/mleblanc\/?p=109"},"modified":"2013-09-08T09:13:21","modified_gmt":"2013-09-08T12:13:21","slug":"arial-and-helvetica-a-grotesk-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/?p=109","title":{"rendered":"Arial and Helvetica: A Grotesk History"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"arial_92\"<\/p>\n

In March I attended the AGM of the Graphic Designers of Canada (Atlantic Chapter)<\/a>. I’m not a dues-paying member; I was asked to help out with the meeting because it was being held at NSCAD University<\/a> and I was the only Design faculty who could be there. The main event was a talk by the noteworthy type designer (and good friend) Rod McDonald<\/a>, who gave a talk called \u201cArial, The Story Behind the Story.\u201d<\/p>\n

By now pretty much every working graphic designer has seen \u201cHelvetica: The Movie<\/a>,\u201d and is familiar with the canard that \u201cArial is a bad copy of Helvetica.\u201d This idea is quite prevalent, and as Rod says, is \u201cperpetrated by people who really should know better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201cstory\u201d behind Arial is that Microsoft did not want to pay Linotype the licensing fee for Helvetica, so they produced a copy and called it \u201cArial.\u201d The tale has gained traction because:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. graphic designers are predominantly Apple users and have no allegiance to the beast of Redmond and<\/li>\n
  2. it fits well with the public image of Microsoft as a collection of late 20th-century robber-barons<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    As Rod tells it, the \u201cStory Behind the Story\u201d is a little more nuanced; he traces the origins of both Helvetica and Arial to Berthold’s Akzindenz Grotesk of 1896. In those days, the grotesks were considered a novelty typeface. Stripped of their familiar serifs, any grotesk face was seen as truly \u2018grotesque.\u2019<\/p>\n

    \"Origins<\/p>\n

    It’s no accident that Helvetica’s original name was \u201cNeue Haas Grotesk\u201d\u2014in fact, Helvetica’s lineage can be traced directly back to Akzidenz Grotesk. The Haas foundry was purchased by Linotype<\/a>, and Linotype subsequently licensed Helvetica to Xerox in the early 1980’s for use as a computer display font.<\/p>\n

    Around the time that Xerox started using Helvetica, IBM created a specification for a typeface that was metrically identical to Helvetica, and the job went to Monotype<\/a>. Longtime Monotype designer Robin Nicholas created \u201cSonora Sans.\u201d And in 1992, when Microsoft wanted a replacement to its display Helvetica (Linotype sued M$, and won) for Windows 3.0, Monotype licensed \u201cArial,\u201d a renamed Sonora Sans.<\/p>\n

    By the way, if you’re interested in going \u2018back to the source,\u2019 Rod is putting the finishing touches on a modernized version of Monotype Grotesk from 1926, soon to be available from Monotype<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Arial is NOT just a bad copy of Helvetica. According to Rod MacDonald, both share the same lineage: Akzidenz Grotesk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[103],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-typography","tag-typography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1708,"href":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/1708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.generaleccentric.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}