Type Slowly

The EU has critised Microsoft for abusing their "monopoly" power and stifles competition in the server and streaming media markets and fined them an enormous sum of €497m, which is no more than a parking fine for a company with a US$20 billion turnover. There are many other intangible ways that the public is influenced by Microsoft.

Take typography, for example. Most people know Arial but have not heard or used Helvetica before. Why? Because one is bundled with Windows and the other is not:

An icon of the Swiss school of typography, Helvetica swept through the design world in the '60s and became synonymous with modern, progressive, cosmopolitan attitudes. With its friendly, cheerful appearance and clean lines, it was universally embraced for a time by both the corporate and design worlds as a nearly perfect typeface to be used for anything and everything. "When in doubt, use Helvetica" was a common rule.

[...]

The situation today is that Arial has displaced Helvetica as the standard font in practically everything done by nonprofessionals in print, on television, and on the Web, where it's become a standard font, mostly because of Microsoft bundling it with everything—even for Macs, which already come with Helvetica. This is not such a big deal since at the low resolution of a computer screen, it might as well be Helvetica. In any case, for fonts on the Web, Arial is one of the few choices available.

Can you distinguish the two? Take a test here.

On the other hand, a once costly activity like typesetting can now be done cheaply, through standardised and bundled fonts by Microsoft. Costly not in the sense of consumers having to buy fonts from different vendors, but that there are "too many" fonts with too many "meanings". By limiting choice, Microsoft has actually done a great job in establishing a set of norms in casual/non-professional typography.

Comments

[JRWB]

I am slightly embarassed (or is it proud - could never tell those two apart) to have just got 9/10 on the Helvetica/Arial test.

[mighty mike]

My default font is Georgia. I must find out what atributes that font has (probably suite to sluggish, circular logic!). I would've guess that Times New Roman was the ubiquitous MS font. How boring.....

[packers and movers India]

excellent and wonderful