Jacci, the Desktop Publishing Guide on About.com posted an interesting blog entry yesterday: What's a Good Alternative to Helvetica? No Not Arial. Helvetica is so ubiquitous, and it's virtual twin, Arial, isn't far behind. I admit, a lot of my default font stacks are "geneva, arial, helvetica". I tell myself as I throw that in there that I'm going to look at the typography as soon as the layout and other major design decisions are made. And yet, there that font stack is in my designs years later! Are you guilty of lazy typography in your web pages? What's your favorite font stack?
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Your desktop publishing guide is so interesting so I read your publishing guide and it helps me learn some ways on how it works.
web designing is creatitive job..
helvetica makes it beatifull..
Helvetica is famously trashed by Robin Williams in her book THE NON-DESIGNERS DESIGN BOOK, namely because it looks like dated typography to her, and its thin, light vertical strokes aren’t the best choice for strong headers or logos. For onscreen body text, I prefer a wider typeface such as Verdana because it’s much more legible at tiny point sizes. Therefore, my favorite “font stack” is “sans serif, Verdana, Trebuchet”. Trebuchet’s elegant end strokes look beautiful as header text. I like to designate “serif, Georgia, Palatino” in my CSS print style sheet, because serifs add legibility on paper.
I use Verdana most often, with Arial for things like captions. I use Trebuchet occasionally for clients who want a more elegant look (often female politicians) and Times New Roman for those who want a more conservative look.
Referring to website design only, Helvetica is not a font installed on any windows machines by default so I stay away from using it on my website designs as client-side font display is largely controlled by the user’s installed fonts. I use Arial when I need something similar and require the user to see the site the way it’s been designed.
Thanks for your good and informative articles.
I’m most use Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif for webpages; and Tahoma, sans-serif for webapps.
Artistic opinions aside, Arial (and sans serif fonts in general) seem to be the most suitable for long texts: simple, easily distinguishable characters without serifs or decorations. Since my site is mostly composed of text articles, I make an effort to keep them readable and useful.
Now, for headlines and side stuff, I don’t have a fixed “standard”: I use those elements to accent a site’s branding.