It's good its just, I don't know, its precisely what it says it is. A refresh of Arial. It's nice. If they didn't say anything I would think they just fussed with the letter spacing a bit and didn't create a new font at all. That seems like the biggest change.
Never heard of Are.na but their aesthetic / interface reminds me a lot of Notion. Given its been around for longer, I wonder if they were inspiration for Notion.
The first question that I always want answered when learning of a new font is how much of Unicode it covers. It a question rarely answered by "We have made a new font." blurbs, though.
Yes, yes; it's aesthetically pleasing, satisfies some set of geometric rules that you say fonts should satisfy, and smells of fresh lemons or whatever. But I want to know what happens when I put a diacritic on that letter "a". Is my system going to fall back to a different font?
Given that there are WGL4 and Unicode variants of Arial, it is a particularly apposite unanswered question here.
I wish English had a word for this social media thing,
where headlines—especially when mechanically reproduced—presuppose you have some context or care for something that is in fact of interest to and targeted to a specific [user] community.
Are.na... OK, I guess it's a note taking and memory organization thing for productivitymaxers or whatever. TIL.
Areal, a license-free recasting of Arial, itself a license-free crude recasting of Helvetica... OK. TIL.
I don’t get it, this is just a font, right? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I understand the need for these announcements but it feels… cringe? Like, it certainly cannot be THAT deep
I didn't see mention anywhere of a license. I also don't see anywhere to download this from. Is this release equivalent to saying "here is an OFL metric-compatible Arial," or are they releasing it in the sense of "our products will now look like they use Arial, but aside from that this doesn't concern you."?
This is an equivalent of overengineering. Doing the job for the sake of talking about it, without any meaningful, visible or useful benefits. Quite a generic looking font, probably 999/1000 people wouldn't notice it.
I don't know about anyone else, but for me at least, in 2025, it's hard to view a company not only making a bespoke typeface but going out of their way to write a press release about said bespoke typeface as anything other than a signal that said company's designers are high off their ass from huffing their own farts, to the point where users should be concerned about the longevity of said company.
Doubly so when said company's product is a website rather than an app such that users must redownload said typeface every time they clear their cache.
Quadruply so when said typeface is self-admittedly practically indistinguishable from Arial.
In a world awash in generative nonsense, rebuilding Arial from scratch based on screenshots specifically for Are.na is the flex we deserve and I'm here for it
The whole time reading this, I literally couldn't tell if it was serious or a parody.
Now I accept they actually redrew this font, I still can't tell if it's meant as a big ironic joke or some kind of sincere artistic improvement? Or both?
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 52.1 ms ] threadIt's good its just, I don't know, its precisely what it says it is. A refresh of Arial. It's nice. If they didn't say anything I would think they just fussed with the letter spacing a bit and didn't create a new font at all. That seems like the biggest change.
The monospace is neat.
Then I could use it share moodboards and screenshots with my team: I somewhat dislike Miro and all those similarly over-engineered services.
But, Arial has never gone away? It's still usable on my Windows 11.
Yes, yes; it's aesthetically pleasing, satisfies some set of geometric rules that you say fonts should satisfy, and smells of fresh lemons or whatever. But I want to know what happens when I put a diacritic on that letter "a". Is my system going to fall back to a different font?
Given that there are WGL4 and Unicode variants of Arial, it is a particularly apposite unanswered question here.
reads almost exactly like this: https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Uz8PzDN8F2Dpcng9u33GJg-970...
https://media1.tenor.com/m/RFe1swp-ZwkAAAAd/diablo-joke.gif
Arial, really? Arial?
It's just an easy way to show a bunch of different variations of a thing when they cleanly split across properties and those properties commute.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_cube
where headlines—especially when mechanically reproduced—presuppose you have some context or care for something that is in fact of interest to and targeted to a specific [user] community.
Are.na... OK, I guess it's a note taking and memory organization thing for productivitymaxers or whatever. TIL.
Areal, a license-free recasting of Arial, itself a license-free crude recasting of Helvetica... OK. TIL.
Doubly so when said company's product is a website rather than an app such that users must redownload said typeface every time they clear their cache.
Quadruply so when said typeface is self-admittedly practically indistinguishable from Arial.
https://i.imgur.com/B5UcBRK.gif
the difference mainly seems to be spacing?
Now I accept they actually redrew this font, I still can't tell if it's meant as a big ironic joke or some kind of sincere artistic improvement? Or both?