What is the difference between Helvetica and Arial?

The quickest tells are the capital R, whose leg is straight and angled on Helvetica but curved on Arial, and the lowercase t, which is flat-topped on Helvetica and cut at an angle on Arial. Arial was drawn to the same widths as Helvetica so it could substitute for it in a document without reflowing the text.

What font is used on film posters?

Trajan, more often than anything else, especially through the 1990s and 2000s. It is based on the inscription at the base of Trajan's Column in Rome and has capitals only, because Roman inscriptions had no lowercase.

What font are memes written in?

Impact, a 1965 British headline typeface, in white with a black outline. It became the standard because it shipped with Windows in the core web fonts set in 1996 and was therefore on every computer.

Why do old typefaces have modern release dates?

Because what you set type in is a twentieth-century interpretation of the original punches. Garamond dates to the 1530s but every Garamond in a font menu was drawn in the last hundred years, and they differ enough that they do not look like the same typeface.

Typefaces

37 typefaces with who drew each one, when, and what a design using it reads as today. 13 carry the letters to check when telling them from the face they get mistaken for, which is the question people usually actually have.

The pairs everyone argues about

Helvetica and Arial: the capital R has a straight angled leg on Helvetica and a curved one on Arial. The lowercase t is flat-topped on Helvetica and cut at an angle on Arial.
Futura and Century Gothic: Century Gothic has a much larger x-height. Futura's small lowercase against tall capitals is what gives it its airiness — and its poor legibility at text size.
Times and Times New Roman: the same 1932 design cut by two competing foundries. The ampersand and the figures are the usual tells.
Johnston and Gill Sans: diamond-shaped dots over the i on Johnston, round ones on Gill Sans. Gill was Johnston's student.
Courier and Courier New: Courier New is noticeably lighter, which is why it looks washed out on screen.

The whole timeline

Year	Typeface	Designer	Kind	What it signals now
1530	Garamond	Claude Garamond	Serif	Books, literature, anything that wants to look like it was set rather than typed.
1722	Caslon	William Caslon	Serif	Eighteenth-century English printing. Legal, literary, deliberately traditional.
1757	Baskerville	John Baskerville	Serif	Transitional, high-contrast, formal. Certificates, university crests, anything wanting authority.
1784	Didot	Firmin Didot	Serif	French luxury. The same territory as Bodoni, slightly more refined.
1798	Bodoni	Giambattista Bodoni	Serif	Fashion. Extreme contrast, hairline serifs, expensive.
1845	Clarendon	Robert Besley	Slab serif	The American West, national parks, wanted posters, sturdy officialdom.
1896	Akzidenz-Grotesk	H. Berthold AG	Sans-serif	Swiss modernism before Helvetica existed. Sober, industrial, German.
1902	Franklin Gothic	Morris Fuller Benton	Sans-serif	American newspapers, headlines, twentieth-century news.
1916	Johnston	Edward Johnston	Sans-serif	London. Specifically and only London.
1922	Cooper Black	Oswald Bruce Cooper	Display	The 1970s, unmistakably. Soft, heavy, friendly, slightly stoned.
1927	Futura	Paul Renner	Sans-serif	Bauhaus modernism, and then anything wanting to look confident and geometric.
1928	Gill Sans	Eric Gill	Sans-serif	Britain, mid-century. Railways, the BBC, Penguin paperbacks.
1932	Times New Roman	Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent	Serif	A document that had no design decision made about it. Academic submissions, legal filings, defaults.
1934	Rockwell	Monotype Design Studio	Slab serif	Solid, industrial, a bit retro-American.
1955	Courier	Howard Kettler	Monospace	A typewriter, a screenplay, or code written before syntax highlighting.
1957	Helvetica	Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann	Sans-serif	Neutral corporate modernism. So common it reads as no choice at all — which was the intent.
1957	Univers	Adrian Frutiger	Sans-serif	Systematic Swiss design. The typeface for people who find Helvetica sloppy.
1958	Optima	Hermann Zapf	Sans-serif	Elegant, slightly classical. Cosmetics, memorials, luxury that does not want to shout.
1962	Eurostile	Aldo Novarese	Sans-serif	The future, as imagined between 1965 and 1985. Squarish, technical, spaceship.
1965	Impact	Geoffrey Lee	Display	An image macro. Nothing else, any more.
1976	Frutiger	Adrian Frutiger	Sans-serif	Wayfinding. Airports, hospitals, road signs, anything you read while moving.
1978	Bell Centennial	Matthew Carter	Sans-serif	A phone book. Extreme constraint made visible.
1982	Arial	Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders	Sans-serif	A default. Something nobody chose.
1982	Papyrus	Chris Costello	Display	A smoothie bar, a yoga studio, or Avatar.
1984	Chicago	Susan Kare	Sans-serif	The original Macintosh, and the first iPod.
1989	Trajan	Carol Twombly	Serif	A film poster. Specifically a serious one, or a legal drama.
1991	FF Meta	Erik Spiekermann	Sans-serif	The 1990s doing corporate identity properly. Warm, readable, slightly quirky.
1994	Comic Sans	Vincent Connare	Display	A hospital notice, a village hall poster, or a joke about typography.
1996	Georgia	Matthew Carter	Serif	A blog, a newspaper website, or long-form reading on screen.
1996	Verdana	Matthew Carter	Sans-serif	A website designed between 1998 and 2008.
2000	Gotham	Tobias Frere-Jones	Sans-serif	American, optimistic, competent. The 2008 Obama campaign and everything that copied it.
2004	Calibri	Lucas de Groot	Sans-serif	A Word document from between 2007 and 2023.
2011	Open Sans	Steve Matteson	Sans-serif	A website built between 2012 and 2018. Neutral, open, free.
2011	Roboto	Christian Robertson	Sans-serif	Android. Google. An app.
2014	San Francisco	Apple	Sans-serif	An Apple device, since 2015.
2017	Inter	Rasmus Andersson	Sans-serif	A software product designed after about 2019. Screen-native, neutral, everywhere.
2023	Aptos	Steve Matteson	Sans-serif	A Word document written after 2023.

By decade

Typefaces from the 1530s Garamond
Typefaces from the 1720s Caslon
Typefaces from the 1750s Baskerville
Typefaces from the 1780s Didot
Typefaces from the 1790s Bodoni
Typefaces from the 1840s Clarendon
Typefaces from the 1890s Akzidenz-Grotesk
Typefaces from the 1900s Franklin Gothic
Typefaces from the 1910s Johnston
Typefaces from the 1920s Cooper Black, Futura, Gill Sans
Typefaces from the 1930s Times New Roman, Rockwell
Typefaces from the 1950s Courier, Helvetica, Univers, Optima
Typefaces from the 1960s Eurostile, Impact
Typefaces from the 1970s Frutiger, Bell Centennial
Typefaces from the 1980s Arial, Papyrus, Chicago, Trajan
Typefaces from the 1990s FF Meta, Comic Sans, Verdana, Georgia
Typefaces from the 2000s Gotham, Calibri
Typefaces from the 2010s Roboto, Open Sans, San Francisco, Inter
Typefaces from the 2020s Aptos

By kind

These pages describe typefaces rather than showing specimens. Displaying one requires a licensed font file and almost none of these may be redistributed, so the descriptions name the letters to look at instead of rendering something we have no right to publish.

Common questions

What is the difference between Helvetica and Arial?: The quickest tells are the capital R, whose leg is straight and angled on Helvetica but curved on Arial, and the lowercase t, which is flat-topped on Helvetica and cut at an angle on Arial. Arial was drawn to the same widths as Helvetica so it could substitute for it in a document without reflowing the text.
What font is used on film posters?: Trajan, more often than anything else, especially through the 1990s and 2000s. It is based on the inscription at the base of Trajan's Column in Rome and has capitals only, because Roman inscriptions had no lowercase.
What font are memes written in?: Impact, a 1965 British headline typeface, in white with a black outline. It became the standard because it shipped with Windows in the core web fonts set in 1996 and was therefore on every computer.
Why do old typefaces have modern release dates?: Because what you set type in is a twentieth-century interpretation of the original punches. Garamond dates to the 1530s but every Garamond in a font menu was drawn in the last hundred years, and they differ enough that they do not look like the same typeface.