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.

Good to see that I am not the only one who has to photograph numbers wherever I see them. Wardour Street in Soho ist still home to many colour labs, film-, sound- and design-studios. Someone decorated this facade by printing out hundreds of numbers and sticking them on the window.

Before we had cheap digital printers and everybody started setting their little shop notices in Arial, there were dedicated systems for displaying messages in shops, bars and cafés. One of these were black boards with holes in them and letters with the appropriate pegs. You took them from a box, stuck them into the holes and had fairly neat rows of words and numbers. A shop in London rediscovered this old way of making type, making art out of necessity: If you don’t have enough type in one size or colour, take another one, but do it deliberately.

This sign showing the brands available was “art-directed” by Richie Crago at The Three Threads in Charlotte Road, Shoreditch.

Apparently there is a trend to make portraits from letters only. I was very surprised to find my head in a list on typography portraits, right above that of Obama. The designer, Thierry Eamon, calls it, not surprisingly, “… a tribute to Erik Spiekermann”. I have taken the liberty to copy this picture and show it here.