I used to like Verdana but it causes more sideways strain on eyes So... Arial (Word), Arial Unicode (Outlook Email), Trebuchet (Excel) and use Times New Roman or one of Serifs for printing. Courier New for IDEs that goes without saying.
I once pointed out to some coworkers that due to some font-substitution nonsense Lotus notes was displaying on screen in Helvetica but printing in Arial. And that some of the applications we (at the time) accessed through Citrix displayed in Arial but printed in Helvetica.
And that our training manuals used Arial inside but the covers were in Helvetica. (I think they were sent to the print shop as different files.)
They thought I was a freak.
Times New Roman
Times New Roman is an unfortunate crime committed against many computer screens (regardless of whose side you're on it the smoothing war). People, do you know that fonts are often designed for specific purposes? And that Times New Roman was designed to squeeze more text into narrow newspaper columns so fewer words would need to be hyphenated? Why on earth do people think that it should be a font of choice in other display contexts?
Comic Sans
Comic Sans is another crime.
Who would assign a sans serif to the main text anyway?
It can be done and it can be done very well.
Michael Matola
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And of course you know about the Clearview project.
I pass by one of the prototype signs on my drive to work every morning.
Here's an article. There was also a piece in the New York Times a few days ago. [ August 24, 2007: Message edited by: Michael Matola ]
Mapraputa Is
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MM: They thought I was a freak.
This reminds me of Douglas Hofstadter's experiment, which he described in his "Metamagical themas". He chose letter "a" and tried to copy it from memory, counting how many features he missed:
"A wonderful exercise to prove this to yourself is to try to draw the Helvetica Medium 'a' by memory. Study it for as long as you like, and then try to reproduce it. The better an eye you have, the more errors you will see you have made. Try it a few times. I myself must have attempted that 'a' several dozen times, and still I have never drawn it perfectly. This letter is one of my favorite letters of all time, and I spent probably more time admiring it than any other letter -- yet for all that, I still have not fathomed it entirely. "
I remember when I first read this, I was terribly surprised that Hofstadter is also interested in typefaces... Ok, but how did it happen that you are interested also? You know, languages, Russian, typefaces... to many coincidences, you know!
Map: Who would assign a sans serif to the main text anyway? MM: It can be done and it can be done very well.
I *need* some sign to mark parts of my posts that aren't intended to be taken seriously. I wanted to playfully respond to Chris's attempt of an assault on Verdana, and that was the best I came up with. Sure it's possible to set a legible and attractive text in sans serif, but probably not by a beginner, while the article is clearly intended for beginners.
But what I really, really hate is Trebuchet. Just can't stand it.
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