“For most people, Arial, designed in 1982 and released as a TrueType font in 1992 is the typical digital font. It was already a mockery of Helvetica, born in 1957.”
– Typographer
Frank Adebiaye, exploring the “tragicomedy of digital fonts.” In a research essay for
NaN, Adebiaye lays out a brief of history of “theatrical” screen-first font substitutes, tributes, and surrogates that emerged at the behest of type foundries, Big Tech, the Web, and, recently, NFTs.
