Works and words of Nicholas Rougeux
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Helvetica is bad for your body
Posted on February 3, 2008 in Web
Every time I come across a site designed to use Helvetica for body text, I wish I never installed it. It looks terrible in anything but Mac-based browsers (and Safari for Windows).
Don't get me wrong, I love the font and think it looks great when used properly but using it for body text is not the wisest decision. The screenshot below shows Helvetica as rendered at 12, 13, and 14 pixels in Firefox and Safari on Windows.
The difference is clear. The tracking all over the place and at 14 pixels, the height of the letters isn't even consistent. This makes it painfully difficult to read.
I realize I am probably a minority since not many Windows users have Helvetica installed but I know I'm not the only one. I can only hope that someday Helvetica looks decent on Windows because I'd love to use it every now and then. Until then, I ask all you designers out there—for whom I have the utmost respect—to not use Helvetica for body text. It may look great in Photoshop mockups, but it's just not healthy for your body on the web.
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Posted on February 18, 2008
Thats very true.
Helvetica is a great font, and works for most stuff, just not the body text.
Posted on February 19, 2008
I found the only solution to this was to uninstall Helvetica ( actually it was the postscript version) I also had trouble with Optima. I uninstalled from the font folder and have them available for any projects that need them. But all those helvetica sites look great now.
Posted on February 26, 2008
Makes you wonder how many people actually test their sites cross browser. Just so you know there is a spelling mistake in your post in the last paragraph.
Posted on February 26, 2008
Hel F*king vetica. Some people are just addicted to the font.
Posted on April 23, 2008
Hmmmm. Some people only care about their own experience... ;)
Posted on December 30, 2008
I was starting to worry I was the only one noticing this...the more popular helvetica gets (as if it could get more popular) the more trouble I have reading half of the web...
Posted on November 16, 2009
Makes you wish Microsoft would put some effort in to correct type rendering, right?
Talk about a sign that a company cares more for their monopoly than their users.
Posted on December 2, 2009
We all know MS prefers their own fonts for pretty much everything. If every site on the internet used Georgia for body text it would be pretty boring, in my opinion.
You made a choice to use Windows and crappy typography is one of the repercussions. Most designers are designing for other people on Macs, so you're a minority.
Posted on July 20, 2010
"I was starting to worry I was the only one noticing this...the more popular helvetica gets (as if it could get more popular) the more trouble I have reading half of the web..."
I had the same feeling, I always assumed it was an issue with the font install on my machine.. I guess not.