And why is Arial not Helvetica?

Hello!  Welcome to my little part of the blogosphere, where I ramble about all things typography, design, fashion, art, photography and the like.

Why the fixation on fonts, you ask?

This article which ran in Slate back in 2007 should explain the appeal of the font.  As for why I’ve titled my blog as such–well, it came out of a potential title of a post from my old Livejournal, and well I found it so darn catchy that I put it to better use here when I decided to be a little more focused on what I posted about.

But more specifically, this image presents the actual stylistic differences between Arial and Helvetica:

(source)

And this:

(source)

As you can see, they are very distinctive.

And then there is Futura, which is not the same as Tw Cen MT (or Twentieth Century) which, like Arial, is the crummy substitute for the real Linotype fonts on Microsoft systems.  This is what Futura should look like:

  (source)

Though I post photos here of examples of both (with a heavy emphasis on signs), you can also visit me at my shiny new tumblr for my complete collection of photos dedicated to Helvetica and Futura, and I also have a nifty new flickr account to boot that chronicles some of my favorite pictures, works in progress, travel photos, and the like, and is generally much broader in scope than my little tumblr.

So, welcome, and please feel free to leave me your thoughts!  To take a page from Jane Austen:  I am very fond of lively conversations.