Article: The Scourge of Arial

I loved this article from the year 2000 the first time I read it. I have now re-read it and found it as interesting as the first time. It tells the story of how the typeface Arial came about. Reading this article you can learn:

• Details about the development of typeface standards at the dawn of the graphic interface era of personal computing ("typefacess" are sometimes inaccurately called "fonts").
• The way the Arial typeface became to dominate the non-designer world because of its inclusion in Microsoft products.
• How Helvetica, The typeface of the 20th century was also the most shamelessly ripped-off design product of the 20th century

What I really like about this article is that you can read it and use all those bits of erudition at cocktail parties.