When I go to choose a font for documents I create, I’m looking for something legible, but unique. Upon reading through the different styles, I see that so many have different names but look practically identical.
Why is that?
In: 3
Some of it is copyright, trademarking, branding, etc.
But let’s start with physiology: letters have to be shaped certain ways to be easy to read. If we printed a book using a “serif” font like Times New Roman (these have little “points” at their edges), a “sans-serif” font like Arial (these do not have those points), a “monospaced” font like Courier (in these, all letters have the same width), and a “fancy” font like Jokerman, you’d find that reading the book with a different font happens at different speeds. So to some extent, because our eyes and brains have to recognize the shapes of letters, a lot of fonts are going to “look the same”. Most of their differences are tiny variations in how certain parts of the letter are shaped. Sometimes that makes a font look nicer, other times it makes it easier for people to read.
Then there’s copyright. Technically a font counts as artwork, which means the creator has copyright and can choose to limit distribution or charge money for a license to use it. On Windows, you’re probably familiar with Arial. But Arial is a “knock-off” of an older font called Helvetica. The thing is, the company that made Helvetica charges money for its use. Some operating systems like Mac OS pay for a license so they can come with Helvetica. Arial was created as an alternative to that one, and for whatever reason Microsoft decided it would include Arial with Windows instead of Helvetica. They’re very similar, but some people can tell them apart. This choice in Windows goes as far as the OS noticing when a document asks for Helvetica and replacing it with Arial if you don’t have Helvetica installed.
So a lot of the ones you see that are nearly identical might be knock-offs of each other. So long as there are enough differences between the letters, someone can make a “look-alike” and sell it. Maybe they think theirs is better, maybe they just think it will be profitable to sell it for cheaper than the one they are trying to look like.
But then there’s situations like Times New Roman vs. Georgia, or Helvetica vs. Segoe UI, or Courier New vs. Consolas. Those matchups are two fonts with very similar characteristics that do look pretty different. In each case, on the left we have an older font and on the right we have a newer font. For each left-side font, over time people decided maybe that font is not the best a font of its kind can be. On the right, we have newer fonts that were designed to try and improve on them. In some cases, there are studies showing increased readability! In others, it’s just a matter of taste.
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