What is Digg?112 Comments
- bluetytanium, on 10/12/2007, -2/+50TONIGHT WE DINE IN HELVETICA.
- iFungus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+40Wingdings has made the world a better place.
- pyrotix, on 10/12/2007, -3/+30Give 'em Helvetica
- anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -4/+26"> some people need to get a life. It's just a *****' font"
So is Comic Sans, but I don't think I need to explain why I hate that so much. A font is more than 'just a *****' font' if you happen to be a creative. - addicted68098, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23Hooray!
- Cerium, on 10/12/2007, -3/+23You probably have not spent much time with fonts then. Helvetica has smoother curves and thiner lines that give it the balanced look.
One difference is the e. Helvetica has an e that curves up. Verdana has an e that does not curve up nearly as much. - thatsmyaibo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20Helvetica is a "typeface". "Font" is not the proper word here.
- sincewednesday, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18checkmate987 is not necessarily wrong. The digg stylesheet specifies "arial, helvetica" so on machines without Arial (e.g., non-Microsoft machines like Mac), digg indeed uses Helvetica.
- anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19Digg uses Arial.
- anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Helvetica hath no fury like a Wingdings' scorn.
- flag564, on 10/12/2007, -9/+23Best font by far. Seeing it on signage is just a thing of beauty. Clear, and crisp, it really helps present information effectively.
San Serif FTW! - skinjester, on 10/12/2007, -5/+19RCcola159:
seriously? If that's the case, I envy the moment that awaits you when you do see the differences (sort of like night & day to be honest). If you have any interest in design at all, look harder. There's a vast gulf separating those two faces! Basically, Verdana was pre-distorted by design for display on a low rez computer display (lo-rez compared to print, that is) The Helvetica family on the other hand was designed to be a universal sign system, suitable for display on a business card or billboard. It is available in weights from ultra thin to the heaviest font in the world...
Verdana is significantly chunkier, has an exaggerated x-height, kerning & hinting values are radically different, italics are sloped to match a fixed pixel grid, could go on and on, but maybe you get the point. The list of differences is sort of like a history of typography in the 20th century. - anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14This comment thread both saddens me and makes me smile. It's overrun with people who are understandably not graphic designers/typographers and such and are therefore making comments such as 'It's just a *****' font' and digging someone down for actually giving useful information on how to differentiate two fonts.
On the other hand, it makes me smile. It just reinforces the fact that there is still a huge need for creative people and that not everyone can do it, yet everyone thinks they can.
Keep on creating, creatives. - sathias, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12At my signal, unleash Hel....vetica
- anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12"Neue is pronounced "noy-ah""
I've been a graphic designer for seven years and I've always pronounced it 'new'.
...my bad. - adcat, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15I wonder how old Curlz is? Well, maybe I should wonder how old the person who originally created Curlz was... 13? 6?
- noshieopt, on 10/12/2007, -8/+20"Type 'I hate Helvetica' into Google and there are forums for people who rage at the mindless 'corporate chic' of this dominant font. They see it as a vehicle for social conformity through consumerism, shifting product with a great big steam-roller of neutrality."
> some people need to get a life. It's just a *****' font - anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Come on, you can't be serious? Helvetica looks a lot different to Verdana. If your confusion was over Helvetica and Arial, I could very much understand where you're coming from, but not Verdana.
- anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10You must be living in the Futura.
- bunltd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11I like fonts
- thewebguy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10Lets ring in the Neue year.
- abstracted, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Actually, it's a *****' typeface, and it is beautiful. (A font is a specific type style in a single size.)
- LucasVB, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9There's a documentary coming out about Helvetica as well (it's linked on the article, anyway):
http://www.helveticafilm.com/
Looks cool, if you're into typography - occupant, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9 "> some people need to get a life. It's just a *****' font"
Let's hear you say that when you go to make a Lost Cat poster only to find that I've taken Comic Sans off your machine. - vocalyouth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Helvetica is great, but can it add an entire page or more to a long paper like Courier can?
- anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Curlz is a whimsical serif typeface designed by Carl Crossgrove and Steve Mattheson in 1995 for Agfa Monotype.
/Wikipedia - cyssero, on 04/18/2009, -0/+6Comic Sans.
- Shuk, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9I say let it die! Let the age of Helvetica and Times New Roman be replaced by the age of Calibri and Corbel!
- mrRB, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Bah. Tahoma 4EVA!
/sarcasm - edm1950, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Boo my design instructors. Yay Helvetica
- UnConeD, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Actually, OS X Tiger at least comes with all the web core fonts (Arial, Verdana, etc), so if you use "Arial, Helvetica", Arial will be used. If you want Mac users to see Helvetica, specify it first.
- ummagummas08, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"For others, its neutrality is a platform for daring design." - FTA
It's so normal that it's daring. Makes sense to me. - followme, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Happy 50th, you old bastard.
- checkmate987, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5well, i've got a mac, and i'm seein' helvetica, so sorrrrrry!
- DNABeast, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Font selection can be a very engaging process. Words are about communicating language. Font selection is about a more subtle communication of emotions and purpose. I like Bank Gothic myself, but only for special projects.
- rompom7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5People hating on serif typefaces have no idea about typography. The web based media trend today is about sans-serif typefaces, which is fine because it is being viewed on a monitor, and sans-serif typefaces play well with all monitors, where as serif typefaces can really show up badly on lower resolutions. Exceptions being when using serif typefaces for headers, because they are larger and play well with all resolutions (ie A List Apart).
But remember, theres a whole world out there outside of your computer. Read a newspaper lately? Notice the font? (and I'll hit anyone that says it is Times New Roman) - abstracted, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Oh, and for those of you who can read German...
http://www.100besteschriften.de/
Helvetica tops the list. - RCcola159, on 10/12/2007, -15/+19I can't even tell the difference between "Helvetica" and "verdana" except the size.
- michaelbuddy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Ok one more comment. In one of my college classes I thought it was really cool that we took lines of text in different typefaces and used a piece of paper to cover up the bottom half of each line. You could still read the type, and with the Serif fonts, it was actually quite a bit easier. The little serif nubs were giving an extra memory anchor for the type, to give faster recall. The idea was that you could judge readability efficiency by that test. I don't know if it's true, but try out the exercise.
- 7ate9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Wow, Helvetica is 50? I wonder what typeface will be used on its birthday cake.
- edstate, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Akzidenz Grotesk FTW
- anagoge, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5skinjester's right, by the way. No need to digg him down.
- slapthemonkey, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Happy Birthday Helvetica
- adc86, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Kerning, my friend :D
Instructors think they're all knowing and observant enough to spot the extra .25" in the margins, but they just can't put their finger on kerning (or tracking). - mizike, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8Is that the font that looks like Arial?
/i kid, i kid - adc86, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Bah! Thank you! I used to work in t-shirt design, and customers would come in *constantly* asking for a "block font." People just loved to ask me to "Bold the font." My art director at the time did not even understand the distinction. Drove me nuts...
...So I became an art director at a competing shop. Ahhhh, capitalism. - michaelbuddy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2People who don't really appreciate or notice qualities of type fonts definitely would if they sat down and tried to really design a few letters. I was designing a font today for a logo, not a whole typeface, but just the title letters and it was really hard to make them work right, sitting next to one another. Even having just 26 letters, there are these letter relationships that you start to notice. You have these tendencies to remake a glyph when it sits next to one letter, vs another one. If you have any appreciation for any particular refined art, say Tea Ceremony or something, you can definitely add typography and type design to that I think. Calligraphy of course too.
The director of the movie Helvetica came to Kansas City on May 1, and I went and saw it, later even got to meet him at a nearby pub. Real cool guy and he did an awesome job. I really loved the movie. There's a lot of humor and ranting and controversy in it. It's all about love for design I think.
I promoted the movie on my blog, I thought it was so good.
http://www.smick.net/notebook/2007/05/01/helvetica-the-movie-screening-in-kansas-city/
As an aside, I think I am starting to get what some people hate about Arial, but I do like Arial Black a lot. Also FYI helvetica has a bunch of different faces in the family, thick and thin. If you bought them all, you'd definitely be spending some bank. - Ellsass, on 11/05/2008, -1/+3@cerium
Helvetica's e doesn't curve up, it's perfectly straight. I think the biggest letter difference between the two is the a. Compare the images here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdana - edm1950, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Typograhy Geek! nougie nougie nougie
- adc86, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Man... You so should have been a designer in the '70's. Helvetica has its place, but Helvetican (:D) corporate image is a dead horse.
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