I just learned the difference between Helvetica (light) and Arial (dark).  It’s like the difference between romaine and iceberg, or, as one pundit puts it, between Jimmy Stewart and Rich Little.  Helvetica is the canonical modern font designed in 1957 by the Haas Type Foundry in Switzerland, which became, over the next decades, a kind of default typeface for graphic designers.  Arial is a font that was engineered by designers in 1982 in direct imitation of Helvetica, but with a handful of deliberately different details (like the tail in the small A), in order to dodge licensing fees to Haas.  Microsoft adopted and popularized Arial and since then it’s become a commercial standard, confused with the Swiss original.

I’ve always used the fonts interchangeably.  But the book “Just My Type” has opened my eyes.  Now I see the two distinctive, competing fonts everywhere I turn: subway signage, the tumblr interface, bank statements.  (I even passed on online test.)  Helvetica is nobler historically and also graphically.  It’s more rigorous and rectilinear: the bottom of the capital G is capped with an angle, and the ends of the large and small S are sliced parallel to the ground.  Anyone who knows the differences can spot them everywhere, and will never select Arial from a pull-down menu again.