The Hickensian
56 comments
Branding with Arial
Many before me have expressed their feelings about Arial, and I’m sure you’re all sick of hearing how it’s a badly made derivative of Helvetica and Grotesque. You all know that to use Arial in print, means that you may as well go the whole hog and use Comic Sans.
However, over the last 4 years I have come across too many ‘branding guidelines’ where the company’s typeface specified has been Arial. Not by CEO’s or administration staff, but by the “creatives” that the company hired! In some cases, it’s been respected, supposedly experienced branding specialists.
There can be only one reason for this, Arial’s ubiquity is seen as an advantage. Why pay for a new typeface, when everyone has got a copy?! No need to install either! It amazes me that designers make such decisions, but it has happened more time than I’d like to remember.
Aside from the usual arguments, my main reasons for not using Arial in company branding are:
- Its ubiquity is its downfall. Its bloody everywhere. Go to the bother of creating print material using Arial, and it will look like something your dad printed out from his PC. (For some charities, this is a positive boon though. If it looks as if you’re spending too much money on the magazine, regular givers will take their money elsewhere! Seriously.)
- With no proper italics, the oblique version of the font has to be slanted. Not a a true italic, as this article shows. Even uglier!
- As a web font is where Arial works best, not in print, and certainly not as the chuffin’ branding.
So how do we turn this around? For some clients (Charities spring to mind immediately) cost is the major factor. We need a well designed typeface family, containing the 4 basics – Roman to Bold Oblique, thats very economical to buy in either small or large quantities. Do you have any suggestions that fit the bill?
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Gerrit van Aaken said 1364 days ago:
Trebuchet MS would be an acceptable alternative. It has a true italic, is way more unique than Arial and also free. Only, it’s slightly too bold and looks better in headlines than in body text.Nathan Smith said 1364 days ago:
Recently, I’ve been finding myself falling in love with the Myriad font family. I noticed it used on the BlueFlavor site, and was like “Dang, I love that font – I have to figure out what it is.” It seems to be reasonably priced, and is more elegant than Arial. Also, as is evident by BlueFlavor’s usage, doesn’t look half bad as body text either.– Available at Fonts.com
Paul Lloyd said 1364 days ago:
I have seen a few guidelines that specify Arial (or another pre-installed font similiar to that of the corporate typeface), but only if the corporate typeface is is unavailable. I think this is a good idea given licencing restrictions etc. and the possiblity of the font not being available.With the common man’s desire to pick ‘a nice looking typeface’ (usually making it bold, and twice as big in the process), at least this way there is some consistancy across all a companies output – and isn’t this the point of good ‘guidelines’?
Maybe one solution would be to reduce the price of fonts! (Well, one can dream!)
(btw Jon, loving the new custom height, custom font-size textarea! I haven’t seen this before – is this a Hicks original?)
Ken Soliva said 1364 days ago:
How much does a copy of Mac OS X cost these days? Seriously though, If you can convince your client to make the switch to using a Mac, it comes bundled with a handful of fonts that would fit the bill, including Helvetica. Just remember to have your client grab a free font manager to replace FontBook ;)Nick Day said 1364 days ago:
My two favourite sans-serif fonts are Myriad and Meta, they certainly look a lot better than Arial anyway!topfunky said 1364 days ago:
The Bitstream Vera fonts are half decent, and free.W. Andrew Loe III said 1364 days ago:
Why are fonts so expensive? Does anyone else think so?Aaron Egaas said 1364 days ago:
I share the exact same sentiments Jon. We have a client (a pretty major client) we’re building the visual design for. They’re implementing it with .NET crap, and they won’t let us use anything but system fonts! We had a pretty good looking design going with Helvetica, but we got the word the other day to switch everything to Arial. Bah!Chris Johanesen said 1364 days ago:
If you’re talking about a font for people to use for a bunch of employees to type letters in word, then I could see how it’d make sense to specify Arial for non-profits or other low-budget businesses. Licensing fees could really add up.But there’s no excuse for using for a “brand face,” i.e. in a logotype or similar device. A decent font is only a few hundred dollars, which isn’t much money even for a small non-profit. Most places spend more than this on their phone bill.
As for Myriad, it’s a well done face, but it’s really a slightly watered-down version of Fruitger, and it’s pretty played out, especially since Apple started using it. Myriad’s main advantages is that it’s OpenType and it comes with a ton of widths and weights.
If you want an more contemporary and unique humanist face, I’d suggest you give Parisine or Whitney) a try.
Timothy Ng said 1364 days ago:
Last year, my local library got renovated and they chose Arial for those cut out block letters that, at the moment, I can only describe as decals for directing people to the reference section or the circulation desk. Yes, Arial in interior design.Jason Granger said 1364 days ago:
Lucida Grande is excellent, which is what you’re currently using, and Trebuchet MS is always nice. Another good one (to me) is Adobe Garamond Pro, which is a much, MUCH nicer version of Times New Roman. Great font. Myriad’s also nice.Andreas Graulund said 1364 days ago:
The Kontrapunkt Font is free and with all the 4 versions, and is pretty nice as well.Although it doesn’t look much like Arial.
Alberto said 1364 days ago:
At the moment the best choice if a client don’t want invest its money in a font is Myriad Pro from Adobe: the four basic weights are in fact free fonts since they are bundled with Adobe Reader (a free software).If you need a serif font you can choose Minion Pro, another font bundled with Adobe Reader (of course only the four basic weights).
Sam said 1364 days ago:
I’m currently in that Century Gothic craze, also, for charities wanting free font’s then www.dafonts.com is a nice place for them.Jeroen Coumans said 1364 days ago:
I haven’t seen Good Fonts mentioned, which is a pretty good resource of cheap (free) fonts. Also, the new Windows Vista fonts seem promising, both for web and for print, although they won’t be freely available.Ben Poole said 1364 days ago:
Myriad & Lucida families for me too, very pleasing. My employer switched from Optima to Arial for everything (on-line and print) a year or two ago.Dreadful business, and yes, a decision by creatives rather than the CEO. That said, I suspect it was spurred in part by the fact that no-one within the firm doing stuff with fonts had Optima: we could never get the licenses past procurement. Crazy.
Luke said 1364 days ago:
No offence to many of you, but I don’t think you guys read Jon’s question very closely: “a well designed typeface family, containing the 4 basics – Roman to Bold Oblique, thats very economical to buy”.Parisine and Whitney are beautiful typefaces, but neither is very economical unless you’re buying for a humongous company and can get a volume discount. Lucida Grande is an elegant typeface for the screen, but it lacks an italic and it’s a bit heavy for print. Similarly, I see a lot of documents printed these days in Verdana or Tahoma, but both were designed for the screen and I think they look pretty clunky on paper. Bitstream Vera Sans, which is basically an open-source knock-off of Verdana, has the same problem, IMHO.
But like people have said, there’s no excuse for Arial. Windows XP comes with quite a few decent fonts these days, especially if you have Office installed, and really, what corporate environment doesn’t?
Check out this list of fonts that comes with Microsoft Office Professional 2003). There are plenty of usable choices in there for body copy or even for a logotype. Heck, it even includes a copy of Gill Sans, “the British Helvetica”. I’d take that over Arial a hundred times out of ninety-nine. Lucida Bright is also a nice choice, and Lucida Sans is 99% the same as Lucida Grande.
I used to work at a university and we purchased Adobe’s Type Classics for Learning. It comes with 400 fonts, including Myriad Pro and a bunch of other nice OpenType specimens. It’s a nice solution for academic environments, and on a font-per-dollar basis, it’s hard to beat. (I think it runs $99 US for a single copy, but it gets cheaper if you buy in volume as usual.)
Geoffrey said 1364 days ago:
I agree about the Windows Vista fonts; Corbel is especially good. You can get hold of them if you look around.Charles said 1363 days ago:
I recently saw a charity I work with closely rebrand with Arial – in fact, I was sat in on the meeting when they announced it (I was in no position to argue with it, btw, I just happened to be there). To say my heart sunk is an understatement, but, as a charity, it makes sense for them and, indeed, they have saved a bucketload. For starters, they now print off all of their own letterheads and stationery. All the staff have access to it, even though there are computers there still running Win98 (most are Win2000, some are WinXP). But I think most importantly of all the staff seem to understand the need for consistency; they all recognize and feel comfy with Arial, and it is sitting right there at the top of their font-lists in Word like a friendly (if ugly) old friend. At its heart, its a usability and accessibilty issue.I often have discussions with non-designers, and its amazing just how little people actually “get” type faces. With one person, I was trying to demostrate the difference between DIN and Arial and they just couldnt see it – to them, they looked the same.
This ignorance to the beauty of type is very common, from what Ive observed, so I was grateful for the fact that this particular charity was at least making some effort and making a concerted effort to bring consistency and, crucially, making it easy for its staff to implement this consistency. And this is why I think so many orgs opt for Arial – its not just ubiquitous, its easy for staff to remember to use, easy for IT staff to manage (i.e. they dont have to) and is better than no consistency at all.
So to answer your question, Jon – a font beginning with A and having an easily memorable name would be a good start.
(btw, sorry for the lack of apostrophes in this post – for some reason Firefox seems to want to fire off its search toolbar whenever I press it).
Jon Hicks said 1363 days ago:
Charles – thats a very good point indeed – one that hadn’t occurred to me!Dave said 1363 days ago:
If it was called Zrial I bet you it wouln’t be so common :DNeil said 1363 days ago:
I work for the charity Scope (i work at their flagship sepecial needs college) and yes, they specify Arial!Zeerus said 1363 days ago:
I’ve never really liked arial. I tend to stick to Trebuchet MS for headline elements and Verdana for the body. It just looks much smoother. I also have trouble paying for fonts, and try tof ind the best free ones available. Hill House was especially helpful in one of my projectsSimon Griffee said 1363 days ago:
Gentium lacks a bold and bold oblique, but has several outstanding qualities, including beauty and cost (free).Justin said 1363 days ago:
bq. But there’s no excuse for using for a “brand face,†i.e. in a logotype or similar device. A decent font is only a few hundred dollars, which isn’t much money even for a small non-profit. Most places spend more than this on their phone bill.I feel like this is a designer, not a non-profiteer talking. As someone who’s spent some time in the non-profit field, working with international non profits, and mom n’ pop no funds non-profits, neither wants to spend money on a font for a logo. And when a donor can tell you’ve spent a lot of money, like mentioned before they’ll take their money elsewhere.
Lode said 1363 days ago:
I agree Arial just doesn’t “feel” as nice as Helvetica, but this “problem” pales in comparison to what I was faced with daily when working for a local school district last year. I was responsible for the pc stuff of 5 schools, and of course since I was “the computer guy” I was called in when Word templates of their so called corporate image needed to be made.Guess which font every five of them chose? (Even though I tried to convince them otherwise)
Yup.. Comic Sans!
(O/t: Jon: here on FF Win your text form and live preview run under “recent articles” and “link love”)
Rachael said 1363 days ago:
There is an important distinction to be made here between the “corporate font”, as used in professionally-produced print materials, logotype, business cards, letterheads etc. etc., and the ‘everyday’ font that gets used for in-house templates (esp. MS Office). Both my current employer and previous ended up with Arial for this purpose, and it was primarily motivated by a desire to have electronic materials display as intended cross-platform (does that sound familiar….?).Both companies are of a size, and used apps of sufficient complexity, where it was uneconomical to accomplish it by PDFing everything because it would have meant spending a large amount of money on Acrobat licences. Also both are environments where staff make a lot of presentations and hence need something that will reliably be available in PowerPoint, on just about any random machine that gets thrown at them. So although it’s not the most appealing font in the world, it was at least reliable.
When specifying an ‘everyday’ font, you can factor in the cost of buying the licences for your own employees, but not necessarily for those of all the copmpanies you’re going to send stuff to (and not everyone has the luxury of a laptop with everything the way you like it!).
maratz said 1363 days ago:
If you’re aiming for the print-only (poor on the screen) serif, consider Palatino (Palatino Linotype on Win).Pretty common sans are Franklin Gothic and Gill Sans (come with the Office, which almost every company has).
If they’re already buying, why not buy the best then?
Tim Beadle said 1363 days ago:
bq. Yup.. Comic Sans!I detest it as much as the next person, but it does have its place. In fact, it is recommended for use in materials for young children because it displays a lower-case ‘a’ in the same way as children are taught to write it.
Egor Kloos said 1363 days ago:
Arial… sighThis has to be the work of the devil. Ever so slightly crap, just enough as to fool enough dopes into thinking that the typeface isn’t half bad. sigh
I’ve even been told by some half wit that the font was made for print! sigh
Tahoma… sigh ...
Jeroen Visser said 1363 days ago:
A design agency is only as good as its client. If a client doesn’t see or appreciate the effect of the typeface on corporate branding -and hence doesn’t calculate it in the branding budget-, your options are limited.Yet even within the MS Office or web families, there are better options than Arial. My favourite is Georgia. Works neat online and in print, it comes with an elegant italic and it has nice old style lining figures. Combine it with the sans-serif Verdana and you’ve got a pretty nice type duo. (Not suprisingly, both faces are designed by the same typographer, Matthew Carter.)
With Windows Vista, MS will introduce several new typefaces that promise to do pretty good, too. So hopefully, Arial will gradually be replaced by better alternatives.
Damian said 1362 days ago:
This is a bit OT, but isn’t it a pain in the Gregory Peck that Lucida Grande has no italic (oblique) variant? It’s dirty little secret is that Apple uses Helvetica oblique instead.It’s nice to specify LG (for OS X) users with Verdana as a fallback. It’s attractive and a lot of glyphs are available in the font; it would be a very very good choice. But … “italic LG” is a con.
Lowell Wood said 1362 days ago:
_(O/t: Jon: here on FF Win your text form and live preview run under “recent articles†and “link loveâ€)_Same thing with FF for Mac. (version 1.0.6 at least)
Jon Hicks said 1362 days ago:
Its fine in the latest Camino and Firefox, so I guess this something that’ll be resolved soon.Gary Gnu said 1362 days ago:
IMHO, Arial is the best font for reading on the computer screen. I really don’t know where all the hatred comes from. Its ubiquitous and it doesn’t have a “true” italic? That’s the best you got. Come on!Jon Hicks said 1362 days ago:
Come on people, think beyond the screen! I’m talking print design here, please read the post properly!Or are you all winding me up? Please use smilies if you are!
EJ Fox said 1362 days ago:
I’m a big fan of Garamond and Myriad.I agree with charles; A good reason for Arial’s popularity has to be that it’s right there on top of all the fonts.
When I do screen work I mostly use Verdana and Geneva mixed up. Insult me, if you must.
Jonas Persson said 1362 days ago:
As a designer I would never choose Arial, but unfortunately the clients doesn’t care if they are using Arial, Helvetica or whatever. For them it’s about accessibility and money – let’s use a typeface we already have.I’ve been amazed by the number of pretty big clients that have this attitude, and as designers we’re probably not good enough to emphasize the advantages of a nice company typeface.
There’s many good designers out here, but only the great ones can convince the clients that his idea is the best one.
Carl Camera said 1362 days ago:
How would you feel if your company used Arial (beveled no less) for several years then announced a few months ago a corporate name change with new corporate rebranding…but then unveieled their new logo featuring Haettenschweiler in all caps? In two sizes? In different colors? My reaction: If the CEO likes it, then, well, okay, whatever. You have to choose your battles and it’s just too tough to argue typography aesthetics with former military brass especially when your primary job is software development.Jon Hicks said 1362 days ago:
I feel I should point out that in the situations I mentioned above, there was no pressure on the designers to use Arial. It was completely their call!eric said 1361 days ago:
I would say that of the “default” fonts, Trebuchet MS is probably one of my favorites. It’s extremely legible but slightly more elegant than arial for web or print.Gill Sans is a respectable choice as well, but I’m not sure about reading large printed blocks of it.
Zeerus said 1361 days ago:
as far as print goes I think Arial is an appropriate choice. It isn’t as streamlined as fonts like Verdana, yet it offers a sort of classic feel, in my opinion. Usually when I work with print I use Gentium, Garamond, and Georgia. I find them all to be very similar and easy on the eyes. However, recently I’ve found myself using some pixel fonts from Mean Tangerine.overall, I think Arial is suitable for almost any design situation. When designing anything I’m usually given full responsibility over type choivces, and have only had one client ever question my type choice.
Thomas said 1361 days ago:
I work for a rather big company in Germany. In 2002 we had a great rebranding of the complete typeface as well as the logos. We as the office workers were asked to use the new fonts in all kind of publications (as well as business letters).After all the templates were refreshed with the new look and typeface, we wondered about slow printers and customers complainig about unreadable electronical documents … a few months later, we were back to Arial as the standard typeface. :)
It’s not a question of beauty, but one of compatability! Although, I relly miss those nice fonts! ;)
Jeff Croft said 1361 days ago:
Every time typefaces come up on a web-oriented blog, I am always stunned to find that web designers don’t seem to be aware of the incredibly vast selection of quality fonts that exist. Jon is talking about corporate branding here.One of his issues with Arial is it’s ubiquity. And, as a solution, you suggest Trebuchet MS? Or Lucida Grande? Folks, these suffer from the same problem—they’re installed on every PC (or Mac, in the case of Lucida Grande) in the world. Granted, they might not be as overused as Arial, but the issue is the same. Since when do we have to stick with core web fonts for corporate branding?
When Andy Budd did his “Desert Island Fonts” series, almost half the designers chose Verdana, Arial, or Trebuchet as one of their five favorite fonts. Are you serious?
Open your eyes. There are a bazillion beautiful typefaces that exist outside the font folders of every computer in the world.
eric said 1361 days ago:
;)As far as headers and branding goes, I’m a big fan of Transport D. Georgia, while a web font, is in my opinion a very nice print font, as is Didot.
Ian said 1361 days ago:
Some of my faves are Syntax (stick that with Minion), Gill Sans (Stick that with Bembo) Scala, Meta, Info & Transit and all the other Font Font types are really good for branding work. They do really good readable types that have a little quirk that won’t go out of style.Arial is a utility font, devoid of any real typographic merit. People usually employ is because of the web font thing. Mind you check the hinting out at 14px … what’s that all about? If you want to use a straight sans like that then better options are AG or Franklin
Max Mamis said 1361 days ago:
I use Verdana and Georgia for websites. For print, my favorite fonts are Futura and Garamond. I wish those two fonts were on every computer…Grant Hutchinson said 1361 days ago:
The insanity which is the propagation of Arial must be stopped. Although it is certainly ways to make Arial looks reasonable, there are many more ways to misuse it. Witness Joe Clark’s A Hate-on For Arial Flickr group.Jeff Khonsary said 1361 days ago:
I would suggest Bembo . While not free, it is very legible (even at small sizes), has beautiful (automatic) ligatures, and matches well with Georgia for web and screen applications.Jon Hicks said 1361 days ago:
Thats a good call Jeff, nice consistency.I think between Myriad Pro and Bembo, we have a good proposal that covers all grounds!
Richard Rutter said 1361 days ago:
As hinted at in other comments here, I think specifying Arial as a corporate font stems from an instruction to use the corporate font in all deliverables, not just printed collateral. Obviously by ‘all deliverables’ I mean Word documents and Powerpoint presentations. And so the corporate font ends up being what can be used (and sent) in those files, which suffer from the same limitations as web pages.Really there should be separate style guides for printed collateral and deliverable documents.
Pete Ankelein said 1360 days ago:
I agree with Richard. We partner with an outside agency for branding and trade show collateral and the corporate type choices they came up for us is Univers and Verdana for print and web. Verdana because it’s easier for everyone else to put together their word docs, ppts, etc since they already have it. If it needs a more professional layout for a publication or whathave you, it comes my way and I use verdana for body copy and Univers for heads/subheads, preferably Univers Condensed when possible. Neither are my favorite fonts but trying to get a company of 250+ people adhering to corporate type standards is a challenge in itself.Daryl Sawatzky said 1360 days ago:
Well hey, I’ve seen professional designs using Chicago of all things. If a designer is after a computerish/webish feel to their logo they can use whatever they feel the client would like. Use Comic Sans in a logo… if it’s for the right kind of company it can work. If I saw Arial in a logo, I would read… utilitarian, non-complicated dollar conscious, simple. It’s up to the designer to read the client and/or inform them of what they are saying by the typeface choice, and then provide OPTIONS.Judi Sohn said 1359 days ago:
A while back I had a freelance logo/identity job where I was told up front to use Arial. I designed 5 different versions for them to look at, using my own choice of fonts (none of which were Arial). I was hoping that they would like something else and forget the “Arial” directive. Sure enough, word came back that they loved them all, “but can we see them with Arial?” The client loved the face, no getting around it.At that point, I had a choice of whether to keep fighting or just give in. I gave in. There are bigger battles to fight and they’re the ones that have to live with the logo after my check is cashed. It just wasn’t worth stamping my feet. My challenge was to make it work even with the horrid face and I think I did that. I’m not ashamed of the final product, even if I’d love the opportunity to use a different face.
Peter Boere said 1359 days ago:
To play devils advocate for a bit: Arial’s not too bad, only a little different toHelvetica, the differences are up for debate- maybe the cut on arial’s lower case ‘t’ makes for better reading? Anyways, the dude who designed the original swiss must have passed on by now having had a comfortable life, and still pulling royalties into the afterlife -so why be puritanical and overprotective. On the other hand… Helvetica has to be the daddy doesn’t it, the uppercase ‘R’ just looks sexier and classier, Arial is free and common as muck, therefore undesirable.
On cheap and fast alternatives to Arial: Century gothic (Avant garde rip-off I think), trebuchet ms is nice (don’t like the ampersand though), Gill sans,
tw century (futura rip off with swollen dots on the i’s), palatino, garamond…I’d say for print use the classics, or at least the Bill Gate’s copies of the classics.
Adriano Castro said 1353 days ago:
Altough it’s not used on the logo the company I work for have chosen Avantgarde as their institutional typeface. They bought the font and installed Adobe Type Manager on every workstation (over 300 PCs). However, I’ve seen and heard people complain that, for some odd reason, their machines either don’t have ATM or the font simply isn’t present in their systems. It’s actually quite critical because it’s not just used for letters it’s also used for CAD drawings issued to clients.A re-branding is in place and new fonts are being taken into consideration. I’ve had a word with the designer heading the project and she’s expressed the exact same concern regarding the choice of typeface: it needs to be economical, simple and flexible. Also, with a new website redesign on the way it should be usable online. The original designs used Myria but we’ve changed it to Verdana to avoid display problems. IMHO it isn’t looking half as good. I know that nowadays it’s possible to embed fonts on a website and even provide alternatives via CSS in case the primary font isn’t present on the visitor’s system but the truth is I’ve never seen this work perfectly.
So, more than just looking for an economical to buy typeface that provides the “4 basics” (I believe Myriad has the potential) I was wondering how can the chosen typeface be effectively deployed to every user workstation (remember +300) and also safely used in the company’s website.
Lastly, I was going to ask what are the differences between Myriad and Myriad Pro but found the answer:
bq. Myriad® was designed in 1992 by Robert Slimbach, Carol Twombly, and the design staff at Adobe Systems. It’s a humanist sans serif typeface, meaning that the forms are primarily based on classic romans, much like conventional or classic serifed fonts but without the serifs. Myriad also has subtle geometric shaping and monotone color, balanced by varying letter widths and open counter shapes. A readable and friendly face, Myriad works well for both text and display typography. A headline font and the playful “sketch” and “tilt” versions add versatility. Myriad® Pro, an expansion completed in the late 1990s, includes weights from Light to Black and Condensed to Extended, as well as oldstyle figures, Greek, Cyrillic and Central European characters.
in Linotype Library: Myriad® Font Family