When To Use Arial And When To Use Verdana

Many of my students ask me if there are any rules concerning the use of Arial and Verdana, by far the two most popular fonts available on personal computers (using the Roman alphabet) around the world today.

Both Arial and Verdana are SANS SERIF font, and as clearly explained in my recent article both fonts lend themselves well to be used in "information" uses rather than in telling stories.

Sans Serif fonts excel particularly when used for conveying short information items like titles, captions, callouts, figure numbers, references and other short textual information.

As Verdana is particularly effective when used at very small font sizes, Arial stands out as the clear leader when needing to creating readable and professional looking titles.

Remember not to be influenced by your own personal taste and experience, which can be highly misleading when attempting to create a presentation that is:

1. more readable (more understandable)



2. professionally-looking (more credible).

   Overall Arial is a more formal and established font face, while Verdana is a highly characterized and optimized typeface best used in those instances where ...

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posted by Robin Good on Sunday, October 31 2004
Thursday, December 1 2005

URL of this article:
http://masterview.ikonosnewmedia.com/2004/10/31/when_to_use_arial_and.htm

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