Lithodelphia, PA (GO) – Citing the economy, the terror alert level and poor punctuation, the Arial Font has announced that it will cease operations immediately and liquidate all characters, punctuation, letters (both capital and lowercase) as well as leases to various documents throughout the World Wide Web.
“As time has moved on,” Mark Schenk, VP of Public Relations for Arial, stated, “we’ve found it harder and harder to keep our foothold in the market place.” Once considered one of the “Mother Fonts” of the Internet, Arial’s reach used to span far and wide. From personal websites to news organizations to pr0n sites, Arial was the font of choice for so many web designers, writers and self-publishing authors.
“It was clean,” remarked Schenk. “Arial was easy to read, looked good in 10 point through 16 point type and even translated well to the printed page. It’s a strong font without serifs or any other accoutrement that various other fonts, like the ubiquitous Times New Roman, utilize to give an air of formality and flourish.”
Founded in the 1980s, as part of the personal computing revolution, Arial Font has weathered some criticism and storms through out its illustrious career. “The first few years were tough,” Schenk recalls. “People would call us a Helvetica rip off. That we were simply trying to take Helvetica off the map by replacing it with a cheaper version. But that couldn’t be farther from the truth. In all honesty, we were really trying to find a sleek, nice font for personal computing that recalled simpler times. In fact, if you delve deeply into our history, you’ll find that the inspiration came from several bottles of very cheap wine and the cover of ‘Pet Sounds’, which as we all know is Cooper Black.”
Regardless of its history, Arial is now liquidating its assets. “Though we may keep a comma or semicolon to put in a museum,” Schenk muses.
The once Internet industry standard font has suffered for the last several years. “It really all began when the terror alerts started,” Schenk recalls. “People felt that Arial was not a serious font. That it was akin to wearing a t-shirt to church. People wanted something more serious. Times, Verdana. They even started using Helvetica again.”
But they still cornered the market as the default email font. “That was nice for a few years,” says Schenk. “But as more people started to figure out the finer nuances of email, we saw a rise in Comic Sans, Tahoma, Georgia and even Trebuchet MS. Worse, sometimes a few crazy kids would use Bauhaus 93, stating it was ‘all futuristic and stuff.’ It was a nightmare. And, of course, we could never quite gain market share in the ‘system font’ arena. Courier seems to have that pretty well locked up.”
The nightmare was only beginning. Soon the DIY Font craze of 2002 hit. Adults and kids alike, worldwide, began creating their own fonts. “A Scratched Remix” hit the market, and kids began using it to design covers for their mix CDs. “JAMI”, a handwriting font, soon followed and the font world was rocked by a new level of creativity and informality.
“That was about all we could handle,” Schenk responds. “Home brew fonts were the last nail in the coffin.”
Since filing for bankruptcy, Arial Font has begun selling its assets and contracts and big name websites have begun switching to Verdana for the time being. Though bootleg Arial Fonts may still exist, the Arial we’ve known since the hey day of the personal computer is gone.
“We’ve sold our capital A to Helvetica,” Schenk says sadly. “I knew it was all over when we got their offer sheet.” Other letters and characters are soon to follow.
A public auction of Arial assets and memorabilia will be held on Friday, January 9th. Among the items available for bids will be the remaining alphabet and punctuation marks, t-shirts promoting Arial and coffee cups emblazoned with Arial’s 80’s slogan, “Motions of Arial”.
This article was composed in Times New Roman, but has been published in the last full set of Arial available to the public.
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