Debuting in 1982 on an IBM computer was the Worlds most famously boring font called Arial. It was Designed by Monotype and even the designer himself (Robin Nicholas) said it was to be a “bland sans-serif”.
Is it me or does Arial get a bad rap!
It became the standard for MS Word and web browsers thanks to Microsoft so it’s been overused as a font but Arial was never selectively overused.
Arial was just the font that loaded up first and hence why people just used it. Because of that a certain monotony also grew with it and most people today mention Arial as the font not to use.
Arial is a fantastic and well-designed font making corporate brochures, logos and typesetting legible, contemporary and best of all functional. Only recently did I come across Arial Narrow which really diversifies Arial into a contemporary font.
Despite that, Arial is and may always be seen as the “standard monotonous” font that no client or designer really wants to use unless they have to but there’s actually not a lot of good alternatives if you really want something as clean cut and conservative as Arial.
Or is there?
Over the years I‘ve searched for fonts that we’re equally as good and professional as Arial but just a little different and here’s the pick of the bunch.
The best alternatives fonts similar to Arial:
Click on images to be taken to download pages.
Adagio Sans
Calibri
Cartogothic
Collaborate
Deja Vu
Gandhi
Humanist
Myriad Pro
Browallia
Aileron
If you really want a good font to replace