Helvetica, Arial, Univers?
Flowing mainly around the distinctions between Arial and Helvetica, there’s an excellent typography discussion happening over at Noisy Decent Graphics. The comments, particularly these ones from Bruno Magg add value to the procedings.
On the side, if you’ve ever wondered what “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is, it’s a pangram that has been used to test typewriters and computer keyboards. It was chosen because it’s coherent, short, and contains all the letters of the English alphabet (as all pangrams do).
For the pangram enthusiasts out there here are some others:
How quickly daft jumping zebras vex. (30 letters)
Two driven jocks help fax my big quiz. (30 letters)
Quick Baz, get my woven flax jodhpurs. (30 letters)
Bright vixens jump; dozy fowl quack. (29 letters)
Quick wafting zephyrs vex bold Jim. (29 letters)
Quick zephyrs blow, vexing daft Jim. (29 letters)
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow. (29 letters)
Sex-charged fop blew my junk TV quiz (29 letters)
Junk MTV quiz graced by fox whelps (28 letters)
Bawds jog, flick quartz, vex nymphs. (28 letters)
Waltz, bad nymph, for quick jigs vex. (28 letters)
Fox nymphs grab quick jived waltz. (28 letters)
Brick quiz whangs jumpy veldt fox. (28 letters)
DJs flock by when MTV ax quiz prog. (27 letters)
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Quite a collection of vexing nymphs and whelpy whangs. :)
Can’t say I understand all of that. Glad to learn what a pangram is though :-)
So David, why aren’t you using Comic Sans on your site?…. the font of choice for discerning bloggers ;-)
That’s good you’ve learnt a new word Chris, and a perceptive point on the Comic Sans. I’ve toiled many a night thinking, “Should I? Shouldn’t I?”.
If you have considered Comic Sans, I’m leaving right now….
Would you believe my old company used that as their font of choice for presentations? I usually spent the 5 minutes before giving presentations hastily changing them all to Arial…