Arial is an ugly typeface, most of us would agree. For non-designers, however, there may practical reasons now and again to use it as a quasi non-typeface.
But why use this ugly systemfont in metal, stone or another durable material? I see more and more of those applications, and I cannot think of one good reason why anybody should do this.
The example below is an appropriate use of Arial. Setting a Zimbabwean banknote for 100 Billion Dollars in anything else would have been an insult.
Totally agree, its just plain ugly. I’ve taken some photos of Arial in France, available at my flickr account http://www.flickr.com/photos/designworkplan/sets/72157622406121781/ take a look at the stone building, its hurting my eyes these huge Arial letters…
Nice point about the money.
Agree, but sometimes its useful when we need to work with text in restricted work space…
I also think that Arial is not a nice font. This text presents a point of view of a very good typographer but I know people who will defend Comic Sans claiming that the font is the prettiest in the world:)
Oh my god! THEY PUT ARIAL ON MONEY!!??
Im not in the design industry and I’m still shocked.
I remember thinking when watching the movie Helvetica when u compared Helv to McDonalds, i was thinking… if Helvetica is McDonalds, what is Arial… Hospital Food?
Whose Helvetica does at least as well as Arial in the 8-16 pixel height range?
Sadly, here in Mexico, government offices everywhere seem to use only Arial for this type of thing. I can’t explain it…
Dear Erik:
I saw your examples about de use of Arial in some aplications like corporative tipos and others… your
picture is from Mexico city, where all the goverment personel are sick of bad taste not is the only one …also they uses our dear friend Comic sans for everything, and when I said its really all, they uses it that you can imagine. I will send you some pictures.
But not all lost, also exists good design, some people
are trying to do a better typographic world.
My design agency is called Matatena, and we develope signage
for corporations. Matatena is small but it has bigs costumers and
great hearts.
Pictogramic.