Ugly fonts, cutesy fonts, unreadable fonts, bad fonts . . . they have terrorized us for far too long, infiltrating our homes… this article presents the seven worst fonts–and the people who use them. Read the rest of this entry »

It has now been 50 years since Helvetica was introduced. Even if you’ve never heard its name before, you would be bound to recognize the typeface, because you’ll have seen it so often without knowing. We live in such a bloated visual culture that a typical Western consumer is said to see - as opposed to actually notice - more than 3,000 corporate messages every day, and many of them are printed in Helvetica. Read the rest of this entry »

Once there was a typeface called Helvetica. It was extremely popular. Later came a software company called Microsoft. They ‘borrowed’ Helvetica for their operating system and called it Arial. This inferior typeface is now on millions of desktops all over the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft is shipping great new fonts with its new operating system Windows Vista. You can download the fonts for free and legally as part of the 2007 version of the PowerPoint Viewer available through Microsoft’s website (link below). Read the rest of this entry »

A font relies strictly on text to convey a message and the message can be literally what a design is all about. The shape of the letters combined with the meaning of the words must work together to convey a company’s image. Successful typography often depends on making the right font choice along with the use of color and weights. Read the rest of this entry »

The Futura font is a popular font that enjoyed its heyday during the 20th century. This simple geometric sans serif design was developed in the late 1920s by Paul Renner and is believed to have launched the beginning of the 20th century’s sans serif love affair.

The unconventional letter shapes, strict geometric outlines and a lack of ornamentation made a big impact on the graphic designers of the day. At first, the radical new look was controversial and considered grotesque. The newness made an impression and the font and its sans serif cousins took hold. Read the rest of this entry »

Arial is everywhere. If you don’t know what it is, you don’t use a modern personal computer. Arial is a font that is familiar to anyone who uses Microsoft products, whether on a PC or a Mac. It has spread like a virus through the typographic landscape and illustrates the pervasiveness of Microsoft’s influence in the world. Arial’s ubiquity is not due to its beauty. It’s actually rather homely. Not that homeliness is necessarily a bad thing for a typeface. With typefaces, character and history are just as important. Arial, however, has a rather dubious history and not much character. In fact, Arial is little more than a shameless impostor. Full Story

Fixedsys is actually the oldest font in Windows. The name means fixed system, although it is often pronounced “fixed size” because its glyphs are monospace or fixed-width. It was the system font in Windows 1.0 and 2.0. For Windows 3.x, the system font was changed to MS Sans Serif. Read the rest of this entry »