Quiz: So you think you can tell Arial from Helvetica?
It seems to be the consensus that Arial is a substandard alternative to Helvetica. But just how bad is it? What if the logos we’re used to seeing in Helvetica were redone in Arial? Would you even notice if the next time you saw the American Airlines logo it was redone in Arial? Here it is in both fonts. At a glance, can you tell which is which?
The top one is Arial. If you know what to look for, it probably jumped right out at you. If not, you may see that they’re different but still not know which is which.
To test your skills, and help you learn to recognize Arial vs Helvetica, I’ve taken 20 Helvetica logos and redone them in Arial. (Blasphemy!) A lot of them are just plain awful in Arial. But a couple of them are actually tough to tell apart.
You’ll get half of them right by just randomly guessing, but if you don’t do much better than that, here are some good resources for you to check out that will teach you the differences between Arial and Helvetica:
Link: How to Spot Arial
Link: Arial and Helvetica overlayed
Link: The Scourge of Arial
Comments
I spotted 19 of the 20 - I was defeated by Mattel.
But then, I have watched Helvetica - The Movie recently, so I’ve been conditioned to spot it! (I recommend the film, by the way.)
Posted by: Steve Jones | September 29, 2009 2:00 PM
19/20 also — beaten by Staples.
PS. your captcha is making me type anti Britain. Xenophobe!
Posted by: Andrew Appleton | September 29, 2009 2:22 PM
20 out of 20! On the tough ones (Mattel, Toyota), the original logos seem to have better kerning, which helped distinguish them. Great quiz!
Posted by: Tim Chambers | September 29, 2009 2:23 PM
I got 18 out of 20 - missed Mattel and Toyota.
I haven’t seen the film, but it’s easy to spot once you know the trick. The ends of the a’s and c’s and e’s being parallel to the horizontal instead of at an angle.
Posted by: Jed Christiansen | September 29, 2009 2:24 PM
20/20. Simple when you know what to look for, with the exceptions of Toyota and Mattel.
Posted by: Cajo | September 29, 2009 2:25 PM
Managed to get 18/20. Mattell and Toyota got me!
Posted by: Jay Owen | September 29, 2009 2:26 PM
Ah, 19 of 20. Mattel beat me too. That’s a tough one, I guess one must look for the slightly squashed M of Arial.
Posted by: Matthew Hale | September 29, 2009 2:26 PM
18/20. Toyota got me. I got an easy one wrong before that because I was in zombie click mode.
Posted by: Jim | September 29, 2009 2:27 PM
Damn. Even knowing to watch out for Toyota, it got me. 19/20.
Posted by: Steve Ivy | September 29, 2009 2:30 PM
20/20! The Mattel and Toyota have subtle tells as to their true identity.
Posted by: Tony Price | September 29, 2009 2:30 PM
Also, knowing this doesn’t hurt: http://www.swiss-miss.com/2009/09/arial-versus-helvetica.html
Posted by: Jay Owen | September 29, 2009 2:30 PM
20/20 quite easy if you know where to look.
Posted by: Marco | September 29, 2009 2:34 PM
19/20, Mattel defeated me too. It’s so subtle in terms of the weight.
All the ones with lower case t’s are easy since the arial has that fruity curve on it.
Great quiz though, it’s fun to see the logos set in Arial.
Posted by: Justin Dickinson | September 29, 2009 2:35 PM
Wow. 20/20. Just got lucky with Mattel and Toyota.
Posted by: Douglas MacKinnon | September 29, 2009 2:39 PM
Hm, 20/20, wasn’t even that difficult.
Posted by: Nobody | September 29, 2009 2:41 PM
19/20. Got Toyota wrong. I so wanted to be better than Gruber, but I made the same mistake.
Posted by: Steven Vandeweghe | September 29, 2009 2:52 PM
18/20. Fell victim to Mattel and Toyota, like so many before me. Fun quiz!
Posted by: Alex Basson | September 29, 2009 2:53 PM
Like most everyone, 19/20 and blew it on Mattel.
Lower case letters are easy because the stems of Helvetica are parallel to the baseline while Arial is at an angle. Also, Helvetica’s weirdly swirly capital R is tough.
Mattel has taught me to look for the ratio of the triangle in the capital A as a distinguishing feature now. Nice job.
Posted by: Aaron H. | September 29, 2009 2:57 PM
19/20. Damn you, Mattel!
Posted by: Jack Auses | September 29, 2009 2:58 PM
18 out of 20. I, too, was defeated by Mattel and Toyota!
Posted by: Ricardo Cordoba | September 29, 2009 3:01 PM
20 out of 20. Mattel was the only one I wasn’t sure of.
Posted by: nat | September 29, 2009 3:09 PM
19/20 - Accursed Mattel.
Posted by: Craig Michael Patrick | September 29, 2009 3:09 PM
20/20 I shoulda been a designer, I guess.
Posted by: Arthur Jennings | September 29, 2009 3:10 PM
Good quiz! I got 18 out of 20 - missing just “digital” and “MATTEL” - and I had a strong feeling, while taking the quiz, that those were the two that might trap me …
Posted by: Greg Williams | September 29, 2009 3:11 PM
19/20 - Damn Toyota
To make uop for anti britain I got yuks detroit for the captcha
Posted by: Mike Caine | September 29, 2009 3:11 PM
20/20
For both Mattel and Toyota, use the A (narrower in Helvetica) and the T (wider in Helvetica).
Posted by: Daveed | September 29, 2009 3:14 PM
19/20
[shaking fist at sky]: Damn you, Mattel!
Posted by: Refidnas | September 29, 2009 3:14 PM
Yeah, Mattel fooled me. This would make a fun CAPTCHA on a forum for graphic designers.
Posted by: Rockwell | September 29, 2009 3:14 PM
I scored 100% but I will admit, Mattel and Toyota were tough for me too.
Posted by: Stewart | September 29, 2009 3:20 PM
20 of 20 - but all the allcaps ones (esp 3M) were guesses.
Posted by: rose | September 29, 2009 3:23 PM
Wow, I feel like a fool. 19/20 — I correctly picked Toyota and Mattel without hesitation, but dithered on BASF. When I look at it now, I don’t know how I missed the slightly-less-than-horizontal lines on the Arial BASF. I think I was too preoccupied with the counters in the Bs.
Posted by: afiler | September 29, 2009 3:25 PM
I got Mattel wrong, but I knew I was taking a guess, so I feel like I’ve established my street cred.
Posted by: Greg | September 29, 2009 3:25 PM
I came up with a great word and then totally forgot to use it in my post. I was going to say that a lot of these had shibboleth glyphs (shibboglyphs?), like R, r, G, and t.
Posted by: afiler | September 29, 2009 3:31 PM
19/20 Missed Mattel as well.
The others, including Toyoya, aren’t too hard if you know what to look for.
Posted by: Ben Cochran | September 29, 2009 3:46 PM
Argh. Got Toyota wrong too. The shame.
Posted by: _nb | September 29, 2009 3:47 PM
19/20. Mattel kicked my ass.
Now let’s see a 3-way quiz between Helvetica, Arial and Akzidenz Grotesk!
Posted by: Philip Karpiak | September 29, 2009 3:55 PM
19/20
Missed Mattel.
Posted by: Noah | September 29, 2009 3:57 PM
What’s with the reverse snobbery about Arial these days?
They took another font and squished it to match the metrics of Helvetica. They didn’t even have the balls to just rip it off completely like many others did.
Yeah, overdramatic designers acting as if Arial burns their eyes is tiring, but a ripoff is a ripoff.
This quiz, which highlights not being able to tell the difference as if it was a good thing for Arial, is entirely backward. Why don’t we celebrate these websites, after all I can hardly tell the difference between them and the original:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/web_design_ripoffs/
Posted by: dave | September 29, 2009 4:06 PM
19/20 - TOYOTA.
My question to all those who said “easy if you know what to look for”: What do you look for in MATTEL an TOYOTA?
I visited “How to spot Arial”, but did not find it. Is it that the “A” runs wider in Helvetica? If so, I had MATTEL right by accident :)
Posted by: Stefan Waidele | September 29, 2009 4:06 PM
19/20. Toyota got me too
Posted by: Gargantuan | September 29, 2009 4:07 PM
I got 18/20 American Apparel and Staples are the ones that stumped me!
Posted by: Laura | September 29, 2009 4:08 PM
19/20…
toyota was right (helvetica has more circular O’s)
mattel I chose wrong (I assumed it’d be the bolder one)
thanks, was fun altogether :)
Posted by: Helmut | September 29, 2009 4:18 PM
17/20 Mattel and twice capital R
I think I’ve learned my lesson on the swirly capital R. As others have said, parallel stems, swirly capital R, capital A in Arial seems a tad to wide (which for a strange reason is not the case in Toyota) and finally the capital O is rounder in Helvetica (this gave me Toyota).
Posted by: El Aura | September 29, 2009 4:26 PM
20/20, only guessed on Mattel, in retrospect I can see the font weight difference even there.
Does this score help me in any way to pick up people in bars???!!!
Posted by: Raoul Duke | September 29, 2009 4:29 PM
20/20. In your face Gruber!
Mattel and Toyota were tricky, I’m claiming my gut got them right but probably just got lucky.
Posted by: James Bebbington | September 29, 2009 4:30 PM
Most of the time, Helvetica is less curly. The ‘e’s and ‘3’s don’t have the tilt on the end of the twirly bits. The capital A is hard to tell properly, but I think Arial is slightly wider. Finally, the Helvetica curly ‘R’s kept fooling me as I had convinced myself that Helvetica was less curly! The ‘G’ also looks nicer in Helvetica.
Posted by: Izzy | September 29, 2009 4:30 PM
16/20. I was excited about that score until I came here and read everyone’s. :(
Posted by: Cat | September 29, 2009 4:32 PM
20/20. I thought most looked pretty similar, but I admit I used “which looks better?” for the ones where I couldn’t find a non-parallel bit to ID the Helvetica… and it worked.
Posted by: Jon the Geek | September 29, 2009 4:35 PM
Is Toyota even using Helvetica? The roundness of the Os isn’t like any Helvetica I’ve seen. Also, see here: http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/forum/case/103306/
Posted by: arktos | September 29, 2009 4:41 PM
19/20 - DAMN YOU KAWASAKI. Also I have to admit the Mattel one nearly got me. I ended up choosing the one which I thought had better kerning. Which really tickles me.
Posted by: Lilian | September 29, 2009 4:41 PM
19/20 damn toyota
Posted by: mike | September 29, 2009 4:46 PM
19/20
Mattel :-(
Posted by: Joe Font | September 29, 2009 4:52 PM
That was great! 19/20 - like many I was fooled by Toyota. A fun break to my day’s monotony.
Posted by: Andy Owen | September 29, 2009 4:59 PM
20/20 and I are smug about that, if not have grammar it
Posted by: diskgrinder | September 29, 2009 4:59 PM
I got 19 out of 20 right. I missed the “Mattel.” All caps, all straight strokes left me clueless.
Posted by: Eric Murphy | September 29, 2009 5:00 PM
perhaps tell people the two words in the capcha should be typed without space. Or should I know that?
Posted by: diskgrinder | September 29, 2009 5:01 PM
Darn it. Toyota got me. The “O” is totally misleading. Should have looked at the “Y.”
Posted by: Ast A. Moore | September 29, 2009 5:04 PM
19/20 Mattel was hard. This little quiz made me realize the beauty of Helvetica and the ugliness of Arial!
The c’s in Scotch and the 3 in 3M look amazingly harsh in Arial!
Posted by: Tiffany | September 29, 2009 5:04 PM
18/20 - Agfa & Mattel. Forgot about the “G” and the lower horizontal line in the “A” in the former. For the latter, the “A” seemed disproportionate to the rest but I think it was an optical illusion due to the framing.
Posted by: dvessel | September 29, 2009 5:05 PM
The TOYOTA wordmark is not Helvetica.
The example set in Arial is stylistically much closer to Helvetica than the original logo — so everyone who got this one “wrong” is actually closer to the truth.
Posted by: Holger Kappenstein | September 29, 2009 5:11 PM
20/20 And I learned two new arial/helvetica flags.
the middle of the M is less optically consistent in arial, and the O’s in helvetica are more geometric.
I’d never be able to tell those two without comparison though. I only guessed based on what looks better.
Posted by: daniel sherson | September 29, 2009 5:13 PM
18/20. Mattel was tricky. And I accidentally clicked the wrong one for Panasonic (Panasonic!). Honestly, ok?
Posted by: Andrew Fox | September 29, 2009 5:17 PM
so, actually Os aren’t more geometric, that’s just toyota cheating.
http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/forum/case/103306/
Posted by: daniel sherson | September 29, 2009 5:20 PM
19/20 … darn you Mattel!!! hehehe
Posted by: meghan feyerabend | September 29, 2009 5:24 PM
18/20 - Mattel and Toyota got me … as so many before. Tricky and fun. Thanx.
Posted by: Ingo | September 29, 2009 5:29 PM
Fucking Mattel.
Posted by: Sam | September 29, 2009 5:31 PM
13/20
When I didn’t even believe I could tell, I picked the one I liked the best. Arial is supposed to be the ugly one, right?
The score would have been even worse if I didn’t get feedback on the previous questions until the quiz was over.
Posted by: Daniel | September 29, 2009 5:32 PM
18/20 but I was in a hurry. Also just saw Helvetica movie, so I often looked for the horizontal and vertical terminators. Dead giveaway.
Posted by: Joseph Francis | September 29, 2009 5:33 PM
20/20
…it’s all about the ‘r’
Posted by: Andy | September 29, 2009 5:40 PM
19/20. I blew it on Target. The R and G caps are very different, but I thought the more curly R was uncharacteristically flamboyant for Helvetica. Why so curly?
Posted by: Mark | September 29, 2009 5:46 PM
got 19/20 correct. Missed Mattel
Posted by: Land du Pont | September 29, 2009 5:48 PM
I too was defeated by mattel.
Posted by: Marc | September 29, 2009 5:49 PM
Got TOYOTA wrong, 19/20 correct. Thanks for the fun quiz.
Posted by: inspirationbit | September 29, 2009 6:01 PM
got screwed by toyota and mattel as well
Posted by: Rocco Poiago | September 29, 2009 6:03 PM
Damn you Mattel!
Posted by: Steve | September 29, 2009 6:06 PM
20/20 Mattel was my only blind pick and Toyota was tricky, others were rather easy.
Posted by: Zoran Nesic | September 29, 2009 6:11 PM
20/20, though I’ll admit Mattel was a guess based on which I thought looked better.
Nb. My capcha is “Special girths”. I giggled.
Posted by: Wafflemeister | September 29, 2009 6:21 PM
Now do shirts:
http://helveticatheshirt.com
Posted by: drtofu | September 29, 2009 6:26 PM
19/20 somehow got Target wrong!
Posted by: bc | September 29, 2009 6:37 PM
20/20! - but I threw a wild guess at Mattel, and had a slightly stronger intuition for Toyota.
Posted by: PerryCollective | September 29, 2009 6:38 PM
19/20
I’m pretty sure the Mattel logo was switched and I chose the right one…
Toyota is pretty easy (rounder “O”.)
The rest is a piece of cake.
Posted by: Demian | September 29, 2009 6:38 PM
15/20. I’m not a graphic designer and I don’t look at fonts all day so I’m happy with my result.
Posted by: laanba | September 29, 2009 6:41 PM
18/20
But you know what, I zipped through quickly, simply identifying the font that looked slightly bolder. I didn’t examine the letter forms at all.
What does that tell us?
Posted by: Chris | September 29, 2009 6:46 PM
After I took it someone pointed out to me the image filenames contain the font name.
Posted by: Pete | September 29, 2009 7:02 PM
17/20 - defeated by some allcaps.
I didn’t realize that Arial was that much uglier until I saw them side by side in design contexts. Wow!
Posted by: AK | September 29, 2009 7:12 PM
I got 14/20, but I’m not a graphic designer, or font designer, so I am not too worked up about it!!!
Posted by: ERin | September 29, 2009 7:14 PM
17/20 The CAPS got me. They’re the hardest to tell apart (for me)…
Posted by: Rednoser | September 29, 2009 7:39 PM
19/20
Toyota is hard…
Posted by: Jules Stoop | September 29, 2009 7:54 PM
19/20, Mattel.
I almost think the Arial Mattel is superior to the Helvetica. (This is the only case in which I think anything of the sort.)
The real giveaway in Mattel, though, and the thing that makes Helvetica eke out the win, is the E. The slightly-shorter middle arm of Arial’s E messes up the negative space between the E and the L. If I were a real designer that would’ve stuck out like a sore thumb.
Posted by: Lanny Heidbreder | September 29, 2009 7:57 PM
So I sucked at this. 11/20. I even missed Target! Good thing I am a project manager and not a designer. But nice post, and great job with the blog, btw. I have you linked off of mine.
Will take the retest and see if I fare any better.
Posted by: Kim Tackett | September 29, 2009 8:10 PM
17/20 with lots of help from the “How to tell Arial and Helvetica Apart” links.
Posted by: Olivia | September 29, 2009 8:42 PM
19 of 20. Mattel ruined my perfect score.
Posted by: Tammy Pruitt | September 29, 2009 8:51 PM
damn you TOYOTA!!!!!
Posted by: adam | September 29, 2009 8:51 PM
20/20 (although Mattel and Toyota were rather tricky).
You might want to look at the typeface used for the various labels on the dashboard of a late-model Honda. The typeface appears to be Helvetica, although the Gs and Rs are taken from Arial.
Posted by: John | September 29, 2009 9:08 PM
Got 20/20! Ultimate helvetica WIN!
Posted by: katiebluebird | September 29, 2009 9:12 PM
19/20, great quiz though.
Posted by: Jeff Milner | September 29, 2009 9:40 PM
20/20, though I mostly guessed with MATTEL. TOYOTA was easy, though, with the more truly circular O’s that Helvetica has.
Posted by: Joseph Spiros | September 29, 2009 10:17 PM
20/20! Mattel was the hardest… I was pretty sure I had it right but I don’t know why — it just looked more elegant. Toyota was easier because of the Os — Helvetica’s are rounder.
Posted by: Julie | September 29, 2009 10:20 PM
I also got 18 out of 20 - missed both Mattel and Toyota.
The lowercase are easy by comparison, unless there is a “R” involved.
Posted by: Chad | September 29, 2009 10:34 PM
Whoa… I thought I was the only one who sweated over Mattel and Toyota.
I want to start a club with all of you people. Seriously, we’re going to have a monthly newsletter with such awesome kerning it’s not even funny.
Anyone who is interested, email larry at houseoflegend dot com and await further instructions. I’m not kidding. I hereby call to order the first meeting of DAMN YOU TOYOTA!
Posted by: Larry Legend | September 29, 2009 10:35 PM
20/20 and very surprised. Another Mattel/Toyota guesser here. I don’t have the experience to derive those two from personal knowledge but just went with what felt subjectivity “right”.
Maybe that’s the mark of a good typeface.
PS: Loved the “keming” reference.
Posted by: Wrinkle_In_Time | September 29, 2009 10:46 PM
19/20… ugh defeated by MATTEL - funny enough I liked the Arial version MUCH better, maybe I just wanted it to be true! Oh and had I studied the “E” and the em width of the A closer - maybe just maybe I would have accepted poor typography and chosen correctly.
Posted by: Jane | September 29, 2009 10:52 PM
18/20 - Mattel and Lufthansa were the two that tripped me up.
Posted by: JP | September 29, 2009 11:36 PM
20/20
Thing is, Arial’s faults still don’t make me like Helvetica any better. I wouldn’t mind if both of them disappeared.
Posted by: Robert Fisher | September 29, 2009 11:38 PM
19/20
Dang, Toyota tripped me up, as well.
Posted by: DomesticGeek | September 29, 2009 11:43 PM
19/20 Damn you Toyota and your non-standard Os!
Posted by: redfood | September 29, 2009 11:57 PM
20/20
Mattel was tricky; I had to guess based on kerning, but it coulda gone either way.
Posted by: Duane | September 30, 2009 12:02 AM
I thought TOYOTA was in Folio, not Helvetica.
Posted by: Cameron | September 30, 2009 12:57 AM
18/20 Mattel here too, but CVS somehow stumbled me.
Posted by: David | September 30, 2009 1:17 AM
Argh - Mattel and Toyota fooled me too.
Posted by: Peter C | September 30, 2009 2:20 AM
20/20!
Thought I would struggle, but found it pretty instinctive.
The one that looked better on first impulse was always the right one.
Posted by: Clawsout | September 30, 2009 2:45 AM
20/20.
mattel was medium difficulty due to a kerning error. toyota was harder but the weight looked wrong. everything else was eeaassyy.
Posted by: Chris | September 30, 2009 3:02 AM
20of20 hell yeah!
Posted by: prostee | September 30, 2009 3:02 AM
“You answered 12 out of 20 questions correctly.”
Looks like i’m the looser in here…. ;-)
Wel, i’m not into types and fonts.
Posted by: Andreas Becker | September 30, 2009 3:03 AM
18/20
I got Mattel and Toyota correct! the one’s that tripped me up were Panasonic and The North Face. Now that I look again i really should have got them correct. oh well.
Posted by: Ed Moore | September 30, 2009 3:36 AM
Got 19 out of 20.
Mattel’s use of Helvetica is imbalanced, the Arial looked better - but you know, the M was too light next to the A - so that should have been the clue.
Posted by: steve mehallo | September 30, 2009 3:53 AM
20/20. I had trouble with Toyota and Mattel but “felt” the right ones :)
Posted by: Kuba Bogaczewicz | September 30, 2009 3:58 AM
20/20. Maybe I should be a designer?
Mattel and Toyota were the only “hard” ones, since they had no giveaways. With Mattel I went with the one that I thought had better kerning and I’ve seen the Toyota wordmark so many times that the correct one instantly jumped out at me, whether it was actually Helvetica or not.
Posted by: mog | September 30, 2009 4:19 AM
19/20, damn you Toyota
Posted by: Florian | September 30, 2009 4:54 AM
20/20, Toyota and Mattel were not immediately obvious but the capital O is more circular in Helvetica, whereas Arial’s O is more oval.
Mattel’s M is the giveaway. The center vertex is disproportionately thick compared to the verticals.
Posted by: Sam | September 30, 2009 5:27 AM
I spotted 19 of the 20 - I was defeated by Toyota
Posted by: trami | September 30, 2009 6:17 AM
great quiz, I got 18/20 (I was wrong about Mattel and Panasonic).
Posted by: sarma | September 30, 2009 6:35 AM
19/20, beaten by Toyota
Posted by: jason | September 30, 2009 6:46 AM
18/20: Bell Atlantic scuppered me before I realised Helvetica has flat t-tops and TOYOTA was just plain difficult…
Posted by: Ben Walker | September 30, 2009 7:14 AM
19/20 Beaten by Matell
Posted by: Sid | September 30, 2009 7:24 AM
Mattel got me good. How do you tell the difference?
Posted by: Martin | September 30, 2009 7:27 AM
15/20 - please don’t tell my friend, Silas.
Posted by: dawlism | September 30, 2009 7:45 AM
20/20 - Yay! I r a deziner now?
Mattel and Toyota almost got me, but the spacing and kerning were even in Helvetica.
Posted by: Lex Ein | September 30, 2009 7:53 AM
19/20 - Toyota got me, but this is probably the only one (imo) that looks better in Arial. I simply do not like how the “O”s are too round so I fell to Arial. Kerning might be better in Helvetica though.
Posted by: coyote | September 30, 2009 8:08 AM
17/20 Mattel & Toyota as many others, and an unforgivable mistake: Post-it. The slashed top of the t… dammit!
Posted by: maria | September 30, 2009 8:09 AM
Ha ha! 20/20 baby!
I must do this for a living or something…
Posted by: Erik Teichmann | September 30, 2009 8:21 AM
17/20 - I actually got Mattel right, which gives me some comfort in my B+ final score. I spaced on a few of the “easier” ones like Staples and Target.
I’m not really a designer, and I didn’t read the links before taking the test, but seeing the two fonts side by side (top by bottom?) really brings out the differences. And confirms what I already knew in my Gruber-influenced heart to be true.
Arial is a hideous, hideous font.
Posted by: Timothy Sanford Hankins | September 30, 2009 8:23 AM
18/20, Toyota got me as well… damn, I also missed AA.
Posted by: Joe Yeung | September 30, 2009 8:34 AM
19/20
Great quiz, Easy to spot the lower case ‘t’, struggled with ‘TOYOTA’ though!
Thanks!
Posted by: Amit | September 30, 2009 8:45 AM
20/20 — Toyota was relatively easier than Mattel. I’m going to send this link to my daughter, who is majoring in graphics design (and has her own strong opinions on fonta).
Posted by: lar3ry | September 30, 2009 8:59 AM
18/20 - MATTEL and TOYOTA got me too:) - Very Cool Quiz!
Posted by: squareart | September 30, 2009 9:07 AM
18/20
just based on the assumption that helvetica should look better…
Posted by: a. | September 30, 2009 9:09 AM
18/20
Posted by: Teicu | September 30, 2009 10:37 AM
Mattel and Staples got me - maybe it was the subliminal Swissiness of the white on red? hehe.
Posted by: Chantal | September 30, 2009 10:37 AM
13/20 — I guess I’m not a font dork.
CAPTCHA: “James placates” — I thought “James” meant “usurper”.
Posted by: pj | September 30, 2009 10:38 AM
Wow, I did better than I expected, 20/20. I don’t know, I just picked the better-looking one. I guess I’m in the Helvetica camp here. The 3M one was truly horrid in Arial. The kerning seemed quite different, too.
And I like Rockwell’s idea of using this as a Captcha for graphic designers :)
Posted by: milky | September 30, 2009 10:42 AM
19/20.
I never flew AA, so that’s my excuse.
Posted by: Simon Jary | September 30, 2009 11:04 AM
18/20
You might want to scramble the image names, though. They’re a dead giveaway.
Posted by: Dave | September 30, 2009 11:04 AM
Mattel got me. 19/20.
Posted by: passim | September 30, 2009 11:05 AM
19/20. The Mattel logo threw me off. (It really helped to look at the second link “Overlayed”.) Was that cheating?
(My Captcha was “prentice flunkeys”. I think that applies…)
Posted by: ScoBo | September 30, 2009 11:06 AM
17/20 - quite proud of myself since I design for sheer entertainment right now.
Posted by: J | September 30, 2009 11:08 AM
20/20! My college roommate was a graphic design major, so I’ve had plenty of exposure to the differences between the two. And yes, I think Helvetica does look significantly better.
Posted by: Kelsey | September 30, 2009 11:43 AM
17/20 – got BASF, NATIONAL and STAPLES wrong!!!!! Good luck to you all.
Posted by: Jimbob | September 30, 2009 11:48 AM
19/20 - Feeling extra shame because I DRIVE a Toyota. (Though I’m letting myself off the hook a little because the nameplate fell off years ago.)
Posted by: czelticgirl | September 30, 2009 11:52 AM
20/20. Staples was the only one I was unsure about, until I noticed the Arial one didn’t have the registered trademark.
Posted by: JohnK | September 30, 2009 11:56 AM
19/20 - Damn you Mattel, Great quiz though!
Posted by: B | September 30, 2009 12:09 PM
I got 19 out of 20…I got into a bit of a rhythm until I got stumped at Mattel…I should of went with my instinct…Helvetica was more geometric than Arial so if all the characters look as though they could fit in an em square…it’s Helvetica…there are also some more telltale signs but that’s a secret…
Posted by: Kwesi Amuti | September 30, 2009 12:12 PM
19/20 - MATTEL was tricky.
Posted by: cadeux | September 30, 2009 12:32 PM
14/20 Pay attention to the C’s and the S’s that was what usually got me through them.
Posted by: G | September 30, 2009 1:36 PM
19 out of 20. I got lucky on mattel, and missed toyota. dang capital letters…
Posted by: Matt Pickell | September 30, 2009 1:37 PM
Holy crap that was hard…
I got 17 of 20
These three tripped me up.
•Bell Atlantic
•TARGET
•TOYOTA
Great exercise!
Posted by: Jim | September 30, 2009 1:44 PM
20 out of 20
I have been conditioned to hate Arial… and Verdana. For some reason, the web seems to think they are all the same! For shame web… for shame.
Posted by: Alan McD | September 30, 2009 1:46 PM
Ugh if it wasn’t for Toyota I would have gotten a perfect score 19/20. Mattel was a tough one too, but like someone else mentioned, the one with better kerning is Helvetica. Lots of distinction on the edges/anatomy of the strokes in the ‘S’, ‘C’, ‘T’, ‘a’, and other letters in a lot of the comparisons, so that helped in recognizing Helvetica over Arial.
Posted by: David | September 30, 2009 1:49 PM
19/20, cursed Mattel. Junctions, terminals, and counterspaces are the giveaways.
Posted by: Dogg | September 30, 2009 1:58 PM
19/20 - also got beaten by Mattel. Toyota wasn’t that hard cause of the lengthy ‘o’ in the Arial version :)
Posted by: klickreflex | September 30, 2009 2:07 PM
19/20 … Toyota was a tough one!
Posted by: Michael A | September 30, 2009 2:07 PM
19/20: due to TOYOTA
Posted by: arm | September 30, 2009 2:11 PM
20/20…mattel was tricky though. Phew!
Posted by: sri | September 30, 2009 2:15 PM
20/20; that was kind of easy actually.
You should make a “Helvetica vs. Univers” quiz :D
Posted by: djyuki | September 30, 2009 2:23 PM
Even easier when you look at the source code!
Posted by: Charley | September 30, 2009 2:29 PM
19/20
Toyota got me :D
Posted by: Nemanja Nenadic | September 30, 2009 2:31 PM
Yay! 20 out of 20! Was struggling with the Toyota one but in the end the real Helvetica just looked neater.
Posted by: Bendy | September 30, 2009 2:43 PM
19/20 Mattel got me only because I second guessed myself :(
Posted by: Sherlyn | September 30, 2009 2:50 PM
19/20. Darn Mattel. It was a lot easier than I thought. My biggest tell is the lower case “a” and upper case “G” and “R”. And the fact that Helvetica is just better looking. :P
I also like how only people who got perfect or -1 posted their scores.
Posted by: Jordan Smith | September 30, 2009 2:58 PM
19/20 Mattel got me :(
Posted by: Octave | September 30, 2009 3:04 PM
Mattel for me too. I go by the Rs, the general roundness and the fat little i! I’d never have been able to do so well if I hadn’t looked at http://www.swiss-miss.com/2009/09/arial-versus-helvetica.html …
Posted by: Chella | September 30, 2009 3:13 PM
20/20! Mattel was a bit of a guess, just picked the one that wasn’t ugly as hell. The Rs and Ts are always a dead give away. The Os made Toyota an easy get
Posted by: 403 Drew | September 30, 2009 3:17 PM
19/20, Mattel got me.
It seems that most people got fooled with this one.
Posted by: Ezra | September 30, 2009 3:19 PM
20/20, i agree with Cajo,it`s easy when you know what to look for
Posted by: lucy | September 30, 2009 3:32 PM
16/20 Not bad, I guess, given that before coming here I knew they were different but not *how* they were different. As some have said before, the horizonal endings on e, c and a few others are a dead giveaway, once you notice them.
Posted by: R | September 30, 2009 3:41 PM
20/20. Yup, Mattel was tricky—but test was easy at last, even for cartoonists: Arial is a scream.
Posted by: BECK | September 30, 2009 3:42 PM
19/20. Am I the only one who got American Airlines wrong? boo…
Posted by: Tim | September 30, 2009 3:46 PM
19/20. Undone by Mattel. The lowercase letters are much easier to tell apart. Look for horizontal (rather than slightly diagonal) ends on the letters c, s, and e. The top of the lowercase t is also horizontal in Helvetica, diagonal in Arial.
Posted by: Tom | September 30, 2009 3:56 PM
Great quiz! 18/20 - I was defeated by the italic, and white-on-color on one other one probably the first all-caps logo (I have already blocked it out).
The ends of S and C are parallel in Helvetica, not so in Arial. O and e are rounder in Helvetica, the x-height is a bit taller, and the crosspiecs in the A is lower in Helvetica. Arial overall is a bit more condensed than Helvetica
It’s harder to distinguish white type on a colored background (at least for these old eyes). Also putting the logo on an angle helps to confuse my brain.
Now I’m going to post this link in a few more places, so batten down your server!
Posted by: Wendy | September 30, 2009 3:56 PM
20/20.. felt a bit guess-y on the mattel logo, could’ve gone either way. cute quiz!
Posted by: Daniel P | September 30, 2009 3:58 PM
I’m another 19/20 Mattel mistake.
Posted by: David Eisner | September 30, 2009 5:37 PM
19/20. mattel.
Posted by: clarice | September 30, 2009 5:40 PM
19/20 Mattel got me too… all caps and on a slant was a little harder.
Posted by: bzsaw | September 30, 2009 5:47 PM
That blasted Mattel ruined my perfect score. 19/20
Posted by: Ryan | September 30, 2009 6:18 PM
13/20, going by “what logo looks right to me?” versus “which is helvetica?”
Posted by: mary | September 30, 2009 6:26 PM
18/20, DAMN YOU MATTEL!!!, and the other one was a mistake I made, slightly dyslexic, lol
Posted by: Marcelo Almaguer | September 30, 2009 6:42 PM
19/20. Beaten by American Airlines.
Posted by: Dana | September 30, 2009 6:50 PM
20/20 sort of easy
Posted by: MK | September 30, 2009 6:55 PM
I got 19/20. Mattel beat me too! I’m a nerd.
Posted by: Melissa | September 30, 2009 7:43 PM
19/20. Missed TOYOTA.
Posted by: wombat | September 30, 2009 8:03 PM
19/20. There’s that darn Mattel again!
Posted by: Holly | September 30, 2009 8:04 PM
18/20….with 25 years as a designer!!!!
Posted by: Jesus Gaytan | September 30, 2009 9:32 PM
19/20, tripped up by Mattel here too. I went back and compared again, & it was still hard when I had huge Ms open in TextEdit in both faces. Should’ve used the Ts & As, they were much easier.
And sure, Arial might be a dirty ripoff, but sometimes it’s better: case in point, the Scotch logo. I know I’ve just destroyed any possibility of many Arial-hating Helvetica whores ever listening to anything I say, but it’s true. Sometimes Ariel looks better.
Posted by: George Trethewey | September 30, 2009 9:37 PM
Staples was easy, the fake was missing the ® in it, might want to fix that.
Posted by: Thomas | September 30, 2009 10:58 PM
You answered 1 out of 20 questions correctly.
i’m a font guy! tho i haven’t worked with fonts in a couple decades, i have 1300 on my computer, but twitter sent me right to the quiz so i didn’t get a refresher about the differences between helvetica and ariel first. after getting the first 4 wrong, i tried to get them all wrong, and even the one i got right was an accident. fun, thanx!
Posted by: DyNama | October 1, 2009 12:36 AM
Yep, Mattel got me too… @_@
Posted by: Charlie | October 1, 2009 1:24 AM
19/20
Mattel got me too…
Posted by: Dominic | October 1, 2009 1:29 AM
Mattel got me too. But also Toyota. Should have payed more attention to the roundness of the O.
Posted by: Elena | October 1, 2009 1:47 AM
Got 15 out of 20 but I got Mattel right :D
Posted by: Spuchi | October 1, 2009 3:50 AM
19/20. Defeated by MATTEL
Posted by: Bjorn | October 1, 2009 4:16 AM
20 out of 20. But TOYOTA and MATTEL were really not the obvious (I decided just with stomach, so more luck I guess). Great quiz!!
Posted by: Sev | October 1, 2009 4:21 AM
19/20, I fell on Mattel! Allcaps logos are more tricky, but anyway great quiz, make more of these :D
Posted by: Simone Scarduzio | October 1, 2009 5:23 AM
20/20 :) look at the filenames of the images when you don’t know for sure :)
Posted by: de_yannick | October 1, 2009 5:43 AM
I scored 19 of the 20 - I couldn’t differentiate Mattel.
First time I realized Helvitca is so smooth when compared to Arial.
Posted by: Vivek Lakhanpal | October 1, 2009 6:13 AM
Damn you Mattel! 19 out of 20.. good fun quiz!
Posted by: Kyleigh | October 1, 2009 6:13 AM
20/20 :) Mattel was hard, the kerning helped…
being a car freak, Toyota was easy
Posted by: G3R | October 1, 2009 6:19 AM
I spotted 19 of the 20 - I was defeated by National…but I blame that on being distracted by having a sip of coffee ;-)
Posted by: tlal2 | October 1, 2009 6:28 AM
Yikes! 19/20 … Mattel got me, too.
Posted by: Marius | October 1, 2009 6:34 AM
18/20 _ Not bad, I think…
Liked the Challenge! :D
Posted by: Sara Gerardo | October 1, 2009 7:20 AM
great idea guys.
just mattel proved me wrong.
but hey, just 5 characters, upper case, straight strokes…
Posted by: Kai | October 1, 2009 7:46 AM
18 of 20. mattel and toyota.
Posted by: Mark Schuster | October 1, 2009 8:07 AM
20/20
:P
Posted by: dave | October 1, 2009 9:00 AM
20/20 :)
and you forgot (R) in 17th logo ;)
Posted by: Petr | October 1, 2009 9:09 AM
19/20 Staples got me.
Posted by: Ben Weeks | October 1, 2009 10:04 AM
18/20
Mattel and The North Face got me.
North Face it was stupidity, I confess.
But Mattel… damn!
Posted by: Bruno | October 1, 2009 10:13 AM
Got 19/20 - Toyota got me! I’ll get you next time, Helvetica…
Posted by: Anonymous | October 1, 2009 10:21 AM
19/20, curse you mattel!!
Posted by: TonyP | October 1, 2009 11:02 AM
20/20 …. to be honest mattel and toyota were more of a guess …going with the gut which one seemed right vs any visual cues from the letters.
Great quiz!
Passing it along to see how my design friends do …
cheers scott
Posted by: scott Brooks | October 1, 2009 11:09 AM
19 out of 20. I too fell victim to MATTEL.
Posted by: Glenn Fuchs | October 1, 2009 11:10 AM
19/20 with Mattel. That one is Hard.
But there’s also another difficult one: The “National” Logo is not a pure Helvetica, look at the a’s and o’s.
cheers, daniel
Posted by: Daniel | October 1, 2009 11:11 AM
19/20… almost a clean sheet… rushed on toyota, and it got me
Posted by: Kyle Gudsell | October 1, 2009 11:16 AM
19/20…beated by Mattel and hurriness…anyway HELVETICA FOREVER
Posted by: Paolo | October 1, 2009 11:22 AM
18/20
Yeah, seems they are quite different.
Posted by: d | October 1, 2009 11:58 AM
19/20. Mattel :)
Posted by: Martin Doubravsky | October 1, 2009 12:30 PM
19/20 - Mattel was the hardest!
Posted by: Kevin | October 1, 2009 12:33 PM
20/20! Yay!
Posted by: Mary Beth Webster | October 1, 2009 12:34 PM
19 of 20. Mattel beat me too.
But really nice quiz :)
Posted by: Manuel | October 1, 2009 12:42 PM
Got 18 out of 20, sometimes hard to tell …
Posted by: Peer Dicken | October 1, 2009 12:52 PM
19/20
Fell on Mattel.
This was cool.
Posted by: Marcy Gordon | October 1, 2009 12:59 PM
19 out of 20. Exactly the same as afiler - got Mattel and Toyota right but it was BASF that caught me out. Looking back at it, that was kind of stupid!
For those having problems with Staples - look at the tagline and then suddenly obvious. :)
BTW my captcha “Sheree $10”, she’s a bargain clearly! :P
Posted by: Teleutete | October 1, 2009 1:00 PM
Would be interesting to see how Mac users do versus Windows users.
Posted by: teleute | October 1, 2009 1:05 PM
19/20 Toyota beat me! but no bad I Think ñ_ñ
Posted by: Arkaitse | October 1, 2009 1:11 PM
I spotted 19/20. I missed the first one - AGFA. I got stumped by the G. But after the first one, the rest were very easy to spot. The letters I was looking at were the lower case e, t, a, s, c. For the upper case, I was looking at the thickness and roundness of some of the curve.
Posted by: Reshma Mehta | October 1, 2009 1:23 PM
Like most I screwed up on Mattel and Toyota. The O’s in Toyota should’ve given it away. The Mattel was REALLY hard to spot though.
Posted by: Marshall Jones | October 1, 2009 1:38 PM
19/20 - Mattel was tough :p
Posted by: Juhi | October 1, 2009 1:59 PM
Took me 4 times to get perfect score. Mattel was hard
Posted by: Bruce | October 1, 2009 2:05 PM
tough one. lower case or upper case both are really identical with very tiny differences. test enjoyed. my score is 14 out of 20!!
Posted by: umd | October 1, 2009 2:13 PM
toyota Os got me
Posted by: Eva | October 1, 2009 2:39 PM
yay 20/20! (I would have been mortified with anything less!) Mattel and Toyota were tricky, but still noticeable
Posted by: lee costic | October 1, 2009 2:53 PM
Add me to the 19/20-defeated-by-Mattel list. The M got me. Argh.
Posted by: Susan Daigle-Leach | October 1, 2009 2:59 PM
As a lot of others I made mistakes with Mattel and TOYOTA.
Posted by: Niek de Bruijn | October 1, 2009 3:07 PM
I’m no font geek, but I figured out some details quickly enough to get 17/20. The all-caps ones were tougher!
Posted by: Andrea | October 1, 2009 3:18 PM
18/20 TOYOTA and Mattel got me…
Posted by: NIkolas | October 1, 2009 3:30 PM
Why do Toyota and Mattel get everybody? 18..
Posted by: Salman | October 1, 2009 3:36 PM
Toyota and Mattel got me to. 18/20. Helvetica does not have true circular O’s.
Posted by: Scott | October 1, 2009 3:51 PM
20/20, I’m pleased to say. The A shape helps with Mattel and Toyota, it is more elegant in Helvetica, with the crosspiece appearing ever so slightly lower and the width at bottom appearing to be less. My totally uneducated opinion.
Posted by: Mary V. | October 1, 2009 4:34 PM
Hey, no fair. Toyota’s logo isn’t true helvetica. the O’s are rounder and the Y and A are heavier. Your judging Arial vs. some other crappy typeface.
Posted by: Chris W. | October 1, 2009 4:49 PM
19/20 I lost on Toyota
Posted by: Jobi | October 1, 2009 5:22 PM
20/20. Mattel & Toyota were tough ones. The “E” on Mattel and “O”s in Toyota, as well as the overall difference in weight made me spot the difference.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 1, 2009 6:06 PM
fun test! i got 11 out of 20.
Posted by: Jorge | October 1, 2009 6:40 PM
19/20 aint so bad…
Posted by: Jaymie Jones | October 1, 2009 7:33 PM
19/20.
I am sure that I was sleeping when I was looking at BASF.
Posted by: Adhip Gupta | October 1, 2009 8:28 PM
19/20…Toyota got by me. I remember Helvetica with a mixture of fondness and exasperation. In Graphic Design school back in the early 80s, my typography teacher had us drawing lower-case Helvetica a’s over and over and over till I swear I could do them in my sleep. Beautifully designed typeface, though.
Posted by: Patti | October 1, 2009 9:44 PM
I’m not sure all of the original logos use Helvetica. The National logo doesn’t have the correct tails on the letter ‘a’. The tail of the ‘a’ should end on the perpendicular for normal weights while on the horizontal for bold and black weights which seems to be the opposite for the National logo.
BTW, I think you should have included the Microsoft logo which is done in Helvetica: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica
Posted by: Warren | October 1, 2009 10:40 PM
18/20 Staples and Toyota got me!
Posted by: Allison | October 1, 2009 11:18 PM
MATTEL got me…all caps is very tricky. The other one that got me was Kawasaki, though, and in retrospect I’m embarrassed. The capital K in Arial is one of the ugliest glyphs I’ve ever seen, and I should have spotted it immediately.
Posted by: Mike J | October 1, 2009 11:19 PM
19/20 Like many others, MATTEL defeated me. I hang my head in shame.
Posted by: Dave | October 1, 2009 11:46 PM
Toyota and North Face beat me. Sadly I own a Toyota and therefore should be a little more acquainted with the logo. Loved the quiz!
Posted by: Amber | October 1, 2009 11:50 PM
I got 19/20. I will say that in the word TOYOTA, that the character that represent the letter O is neither Helvetica nor Arial. neither are that round, no matter if you select bold or black.
Helvetica was Designed in 1957 by Max Miedinger and is based on Akzidenz Grotesk (1896), and classified as a Grotesque or Transitional san serif face. Originally called Neue Haas Grotesque, in 1960 it was revised and renamed Helvetica (used by Adobe, Agfa and Linotype) - Helvetica is Latin for Switzerland “Swiss” - which was used as its name by BitStream.
Arial Designed in 1982 by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders for Monotype (not Microsoft), it’s classified as Neo Grotesque, was originally called Sonoran San Serif, and was designed for IBM’s bitmap font laser printers. It was first supplied with Windows 3.1 (1992) and was one of the core fonts in all subsequent versions of Windows until Vista, when to all intents and purposes, it was replaced with Calibri.
Posted by: Michael Jahn | October 2, 2009 12:58 AM
19 out of 20, was fooled by Mattel.
From what I understand Helvetica is such a consistent and solid style, that is why it is so wildly used. It only makes sense to choose the one that has straighter edges, not weird angles. I do agree that it is hard to tell with caps.
Posted by: Jesska | October 2, 2009 1:46 AM
19/20… with Target being my trip up, probably because it was the only one where I thought the Helvetica one looked bad and unlike the brand I know (Aus) where with the rest I actually looked for typographic clues (like I was supposed too)
Posted by: Bec Matheson | October 2, 2009 1:48 AM
20/20 Easy stuff. 8)
Fun quiz, though!
Posted by: Nix | October 2, 2009 3:28 AM
I got all except MATEL, which was tough. Just look at the lower case ‘e’ ‘a’ and ‘s’
Posted by: Fred | October 2, 2009 7:46 AM
I took the test with some trepidation, as I have a reputation to uphold. Thankfully, I got 20/20 - but I had to sweat over Mattel a bit.
One logo I would have liked to see in the test is Microsoft’s. The irony of it suits the site perfectly, I think.
Posted by: Mats Sjöblom | October 2, 2009 7:46 AM
19/20 - Beat by MATTEL, got lucky on TOYOTA.
Posted by: Eli | October 2, 2009 8:45 AM
Curses Mattel! Curses!
I really like Akzidenz Grotesk. Although you almost have to hauc a loogey to pronounce it right.
Posted by: Jeffrey Harrington | October 2, 2009 10:30 AM
19/20. Mattel. Helvetica is denser in many examples here. I think that the more closed ‘c’s etc. is hurts it a little in low-res body text.
Posted by: C W | October 2, 2009 11:29 AM
16/20
Missed, American Airlines, Target, POst IT (don’t know how i missed that one!) and Mattel.
that was fun!
Posted by: foo | October 2, 2009 12:01 PM
19/20 i was wrong in MATTEL too! but finaly i got the difference.
i´m proud because i´m not an expert.
Posted by: carolina | October 2, 2009 12:43 PM
18/20
American Apparel and Toyota got me! =/
Toyota was a hard one!
Posted by: Victor Soares | October 2, 2009 2:13 PM
20/20 Woohoo!
I thought Mattell was going to kill me, as I didn’t have a definite answer, just had to go with my gut.
It’s a fun quiz. But darnit, makes me wish I had good old helvatica on my computer font list.
Posted by: Melba | October 2, 2009 3:45 PM
I got 17 out of 20, but early on is where I faltered. Just wasn’t paying attention! Pretty good though!
Posted by: Vern A | October 2, 2009 5:45 PM
19 out of 20 mattel got me too
Posted by: juice | October 2, 2009 6:17 PM
15/20… So, not bad. Interessting test.
Posted by: Krls | October 2, 2009 6:19 PM
19/20 - MATTEL beat me. Thanks for this interesting piece, remembers me of how much I like Helvetica
Posted by: Marcel | October 2, 2009 6:53 PM
19/20 - MATTEL beat me. Thanks for this interesting piece, remembers me of how much I like Helvetica
Posted by: Marcel | October 2, 2009 6:54 PM
19/20 Mattel beat me! Grrr..heh oh well.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 2, 2009 7:02 PM
I got 15/20. I had a lot of trouble with the capital letters. If there was a t or a G, I was on it.
Posted by: Lindsay | October 2, 2009 7:13 PM
I got 20 out of 20. Of course they drilled into me every characteristic of Helvetica in typography, and I think I’ve seen the movie Helvetica in every Graphic Design class I’ve taken since it came out (headache). Mattel was a stumper, but look at the difference between the M’s and E’s, that gives it away.
Posted by: Gretch V | October 2, 2009 8:28 PM
20/20! Toyota was tricky, but in the end I just knew.
Posted by: Frijona | October 2, 2009 11:14 PM
Stupid Crate and Barrel. I would have had a 20/20 if I had only gotten that one right! I honestly don’t even know what happened…but that’s how it goes sometimes, I guess :)
Posted by: Jenna Peterson | October 3, 2009 12:52 AM
18/20 got me with Mattel and Toyota… D’oh! ^-^ thanx for the fun!
Posted by: taotsu | October 3, 2009 1:59 AM
20/20! Thanks to Gruber’s DaringFireball link to swiss-miss “a nifty little graphic showing the difference between Arial and Helvetica” [http://www.swiss-miss.com/2009/09/arial-versus-helvetica.html]
Posted by: Stefaan | October 3, 2009 3:51 AM
19/20 Dam you Toyota!
Posted by: AKA | October 3, 2009 4:00 AM
Great quiz. I scored 20/20.
Posted by: jeff | October 3, 2009 4:34 AM
20/20
Pretty easy (the big and small ‘r’s being dead giveaways) Mattel was hard.
Posted by: Miguel del Rosario | October 3, 2009 6:10 AM
Toyota! I guess Mattel was a lucky guess since i work in accounts! I do read about design quite a bit though.
Posted by: James | October 3, 2009 8:04 AM
20/20. I would have been really depressed otherwise.
Posted by: Trent Farmer | October 3, 2009 9:23 AM
20/20. So Glad!
Posted by: Trent Farmer | October 3, 2009 9:24 AM
The Digital logo isn’t actually Helvetica in the first place. The letters were drawn in 1957, the same year Helvetica was first released. If you look closely, the counters of the a and g have a flattened edge that you don’t find in Helvetica.
I created the PostScript rendering of the logo at Digital. If you want to know much more: http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200712/ancient_history_the_digital_logo.html
Posted by: Ned Batchelder | October 3, 2009 12:02 PM
‘Mattel’ was tough… 19/20
Posted by: Martin | October 3, 2009 12:37 PM
I scored a 19/20, with TOYOTA throwing me off. Boo!
Great test. I always love a good Helvetica x Arial game.
Posted by: Charles Adler | October 3, 2009 12:51 PM
15/20. I am not a graphic designer but spend my life harassing them as a web product manager.
Always thought I preferred Helvetica, but here are 3 logos here that I think actually look superior in Arial. Interesting.
Posted by: Elizabeth | October 3, 2009 2:24 PM
19/20 Crushed by Mattel. All the others were easy to spot.
Posted by: Clair | October 3, 2009 3:33 PM
19/20
I can’t believe I didn’t see the difference between the O’s in toyota.
Posted by: Paul Cooley | October 3, 2009 4:29 PM
19/20: Killed by Toyota
Posted by: esskay | October 3, 2009 5:49 PM
19 out of 20 — I missed Mattel. Changed my answer at the last minute, but nonetheless, I chose Arial for Mattel.
Posted by: kate | October 3, 2009 8:14 PM
19/20
I flubbed on Mattel!
Posted by: kate | October 3, 2009 8:16 PM
Defeated by Mattel as well. 19 out of 20.
Posted by: ninja | October 3, 2009 8:35 PM
19/20 for me. MATTEL forced me to guess.
Posted by: Thomasina | October 4, 2009 2:19 AM
16/20! Great idea for a quiz! :)
Posted by: Johnny Walker | October 4, 2009 8:53 AM
I had 18/20.. defeated by American Airlines and 3M
Posted by: ★ | October 4, 2009 10:44 AM
19/20…. I went for the higher bar on MATTEL.
Posted by: Pam WIlcken | October 4, 2009 11:04 AM
Brilliant idea. Devils in the detail. I got 19/20 - Mattel seems to be the tricky one - no giveaway Cs or Gs.
Posted by: Alastair Duncan | October 4, 2009 4:28 PM
I got 18 out of 20. American Airlines and TOYOTA beat me. The “M” is tricky! I will try again and loose my rookie-status ;-)
gS
Posted by: Gerard Salomons | October 4, 2009 4:52 PM
19/20 - Another victim of the Mattel trap.
Posted by: Richard Smith | October 4, 2009 5:01 PM
Not a font nerd. Very clear when there were letters like a, c, e. Toyota and Mattel were hard, I don’t know how to tell the fonts apart in those cases where there aren’t horizontal vs. angled letter ends.
Would still have to guess for both of those.
Posted by: Tim Harding | October 4, 2009 6:27 PM
18/20 mattel y toyota
Posted by: Franz | October 4, 2009 6:31 PM
18/20. Mattel and Toyota got me too. Did better than I thought I might. Great quiz!
Posted by: Pam | October 4, 2009 9:00 PM
Boo…fell victim to Mattel & Toyota like the other 18/20-ers!
Posted by: Jonalynne | October 4, 2009 11:03 PM
got 19/20.. wasn’t beaten by anything.. just a victim of trial and error with the first one (AGFA), because I didn’t really know the difference between Helvetica and Arial.. noticed the difference in AGFA, then applied my knowledge of the difference to guess the other 19.. would have got 20/20 if I guessed right the first time.. :D
Posted by: a13x | October 4, 2009 11:29 PM
Good quiz! All of them were easy once you know how to recognize ‘r’, ‘s’, ‘t’ and ‘3’. But TOYOTA and MATTEL beat me. 18/20!
Posted by: Anurag | October 5, 2009 4:52 AM
19/20 Damn you Mattel!
I think the trick is, pick the logo that clearly looks better.
Posted by: Nate | October 5, 2009 4:59 AM
16/20…Found it difficult to recognise some of the upper case letters! :P great quiz though!
Posted by: Heinrich | October 5, 2009 5:51 AM
Wow, scroll scroll, this one is popular!
Seems like everyone fell at Mattel and Toyota. Me too. Great fun. a
Posted by: Andy Bundock | October 5, 2009 7:35 AM
That was great!
I actually preferred the CVS pharmacy logo and Staples logo in Arial
Posted by: thegraphical | October 5, 2009 10:02 AM
Toyota, what can I say aaaaah 19 out of 20!
Posted by: Anonymous | October 5, 2009 10:17 AM
20 out of 20. Fun, but mostly easy.
Posted by: Bart | October 5, 2009 11:13 AM
19/20. Deceived by Mattel, which actually helped with Toyota. Of course, I’m not a pro, so yay me!
Posted by: Philip Barron | October 5, 2009 1:12 PM
14/20
Posted by: FalconX | October 5, 2009 3:44 PM
15 isn’t bad!
Posted by: June Stonehouse | October 5, 2009 11:04 PM
I got 18 out of 20 - was stumped by Mattel (like, it seems, everyone else) and BASF which now that I look at it was a rookie mistake as the terminations on the capital S of the Arial one are not completely horizontal. Doh!
Here’s a more difficult one:
http://www.iliveonyourvisits.com/helvetica/
Posted by: Richard Welsh | October 6, 2009 8:52 AM
19/20… Mattel got me. I’m such a cliché.
Bonus hint: you left the ® off of the duped Staples logo, which is a bit of a tell… that was easy, indeed.
Posted by: Darcy | October 6, 2009 11:10 AM
100% score, but the MATTEL was difficult>
Posted by: Peter de Leur | October 6, 2009 12:52 PM
Mattel was difficult.
Posted by: Peter de Leur | October 6, 2009 12:56 PM
20/20 for me… very simple
Posted by: peter from miami | October 6, 2009 3:15 PM
Arrrrgghhhhhh!!
MATTEL. I went back and forth and then forgot what my instinct was…which i think was correct.
oh well.
19/20 for me.
Posted by: BJMRamage | October 6, 2009 3:57 PM
I scored 19/20 with CVS being the incorrect one. It stumped me because I worked as a Senior Designer at CVS corporate in the brand area and the CVS logo is actually Swiss. :)
Posted by: Paula Abilheira | October 6, 2009 4:41 PM
I scored 19/20 with CVS being the incorrect one. It stumped me because I worked as a Senior Designer at CVS corporate in the brand area and the CVS logo is actually Swiss. :)
Posted by: Paula Abilheira | October 6, 2009 4:42 PM
18/20, Ditto Toyota and Mattel. Guess I’m in good company on those!
Posted by: Alice Bernat | October 6, 2009 4:50 PM
I ended up with 17 out of 20, I’m rather proud of myself. I left the printing game more than 30 years ago. Back then some companies were still using hot metal casting for type! A very good test for old eyes.
I too lost out on MATTEL, difficult to spot that one.
Posted by: James Kelly | October 6, 2009 5:53 PM
19/20. I was stymied by Toyota. In retrospect, the Helvetica “O” has a much more pleasing roundness to its shape, which should have been the tip-off. Great quiz!
Posted by: Syd Salmon | October 6, 2009 9:38 PM
19/20. I got cocky at #17 — Staples of all things. I’m glad to see I wasn’t alone in that but, looking back on it, feel that “easy” taunting me.
Posted by: Ed T | October 6, 2009 10:47 PM
19/20
Failed on The North Face logos. Though i do blame the subpixeling on my monitor for that. ;)
Posted by: Sam T | October 7, 2009 9:43 AM
Looks like I’m in majority…MATTEL & TOYOTA. Great quiz!
Posted by: Babs | October 7, 2009 10:23 AM
19/20
Mattel is impossible :/
Posted by: Jeroen Bensch | October 7, 2009 12:58 PM
seeing all of you above, I don’t feel so bad about missing Mattel now, but it doesn’t completely ease the pain…
Posted by: Noah Keating | October 7, 2009 1:32 PM
i got 18/20…. those uppercase logos got me!
Posted by: Jen Rodriguez | October 7, 2009 3:18 PM
15 out of 20
Posted by: Cindi Rogers | October 7, 2009 9:24 PM
I got 18/20 - I have to learn the signs for the All Caps logos - Mattel got me.
Posted by: heyDarren | October 8, 2009 1:57 AM
18 out of 20, Mattel and Toyota got me like the majority. I’m not a Helvetica fan, but it’s this quiz show how balanced it is… Great quiz! Now do one with the Akzidenz and the Helvetica :-)
Posted by: DaanZ | October 8, 2009 2:31 AM
Grrr, Toyota… 19/20
Posted by: Randy | October 8, 2009 6:03 AM
20/20, great pop quiz.
Posted by: Jamie | October 8, 2009 11:59 AM
18/20. I spent too many years in print media. But then again, before PostScript was turned unreadable, I used to edit these files to alter spacing and fix autonumbering bugs. I’m too much an engineer.
Posted by: JimF | October 8, 2009 1:51 PM
I got 18 of 20. Missed Mattel and Staples. As others said, all caps logo is difficult.
Posted by: ysn0706 | October 8, 2009 2:04 PM
I got 9/10 fail was on MATTEL, thats hard. But the trick is the horizontals on s and e and the serif on the G, once you know that you cant fail
Posted by: Sam Hodge | October 8, 2009 9:25 PM
19/20 - That Mattel logo was a tricky one… Capital Es, As and Ts are particularly hard to tell apart, but I should have recognized the M’s thickness.
Maybe next time :)
Great post!
Posted by: Eduardo Moura | October 9, 2009 3:40 AM
20/20 - they are like unidenticle twins to me.
Posted by: Malcolm Gilbertson | October 9, 2009 9:34 AM
19/20. Mattel got me.
Also, I wasn’t going to post this, but then I saw my name in the recaptcha-thingy.
Posted by: WilliamG | October 9, 2009 9:58 AM
Not a designer, but got 17 out of 20. Mattel, Digital and Toyota are the ones that stumped me.
Posted by: Shoshannah Forbes | October 9, 2009 2:12 PM
19/20
MATTEL got me. The M is really the only clue and I chose poorly. The rest were a snap.
Posted by: grubedoo | October 9, 2009 6:22 PM
Just a suggestion: you might want to change the image filenames to something like image_1.gif instead of mattel_arial.gif and mattel_helvetica.gif.
it’s kind of a dead giveaway. I got 9 of 20 not cheating btw.
Posted by: D. Greene | October 9, 2009 7:23 PM
19/20
MATTEL got me as well.
Posted by: Mark Seymour | October 9, 2009 10:41 PM
18 out of 20, but it should have been 19 - grabbed thew wrong G in AGFA but realized my mistake later with Target. Still, no excuse for getting Toyota wrong…but I got Mattel right, at least.
So generally pretty good - I’m pleased with myself for a hung-over saturday morning…
Posted by: Jim Trascapoulos | October 10, 2009 5:37 AM
19 out of 20
Stumped by Mattel too … guess its not that a great logo if you can switcher-roo the font! lol
Posted by: Ian Reid | October 10, 2009 12:45 PM
DAMMIT! 19/20. The Toyota logo got me! I shoulda known better though looking back. Ah well.
Posted by: Calvin Williams | October 10, 2009 2:20 PM
18/20. Damn Toyota & Mattel! The cap M and O are tricky. But at least now I learned the difference.
Posted by: Billen Teferi | October 10, 2009 6:26 PM
19/20! wow i was near to get it all good :). Well now i really know the difference but it’s not always easy to know :p
Posted by: Christine Simard | October 10, 2009 9:34 PM
17/20, Mattel, Toyota and Staples made my score a loss.
Posted by: Lars Dahlin | October 11, 2009 5:43 AM
19/20 —this was super entertaining. MATTEL was the X!!
Posted by: Jessica | October 11, 2009 4:46 PM
19/20, another Mattel victim :( Was tricked by the heavier weight
Posted by: Jon Zafra | October 11, 2009 10:01 PM
19/20. I mostly decided on the terminals of the “e” and the “S.” Mattel had neither so I went for the beefier one. Damn.
Posted by: цarьchitect | October 12, 2009 1:19 AM
I got a lot of them correct simply by choosing the ones I didn’t prefer. Which means I am in the minority by preferring Arial.
Posted by: libco | October 12, 2009 3:38 AM
Una buena prueba, me falló AMERICAN APPAREL tal vez falta de atencion
Posted by: enhernan | October 12, 2009 9:23 AM
Una buena prueba, me falló AMERICAN APPAREL tal vez falta de atencion
Posted by: enhernan | October 12, 2009 9:24 AM
18 of 20. American Apparel and Staples.
Posted by: SARAH | October 12, 2009 11:18 AM
19 out of 20. I am ashamed I was tripped up by Mattel. Other than that…next quiz this was CAKE!
Posted by: Santos Vega | October 12, 2009 12:21 PM
MATTEL failed me because i tried to not think longer than 2 seconds. There should be a timer – anybody can do 100% with lots of time to compare.
Posted by: erik spiekermann | October 12, 2009 12:23 PM
Missed Mattel. Still not sure of the difference there…
Posted by: Bryan Hoffman | October 12, 2009 1:58 PM
19/20 I didn’t catch my mistake with the lowercase ‘c’ in Panasonic until I had already clicked ‘submit’
Posted by: Nicholas | October 12, 2009 6:05 PM
Mattel got me too…
Posted by: Iain | October 13, 2009 12:42 AM
it’s not that hard
Posted by: May Lee | October 13, 2009 2:01 AM
20 out of 20 - the Toyota one is a toughy - but they were a client for 2 1/2 years at a company I was at :)
(so bit of inside knowledge)
Mattel was good as well I went on the fatter top of the vertical strokes as being the impostor!
Very good though
Posted by: Paul K | October 13, 2009 3:31 AM
Got 18 out of 20. Not bad!
Posted by: Emi | October 13, 2009 8:25 AM
20/20. For Mattel, compare the A and E crossbars between the two demonstrations. Also, note the M. For TOYOTA, Helvetica is more optically consistent at heavier weights.
Posted by: Wonka | October 13, 2009 4:38 PM
19 out of 20 - yep the ol’ Mattel got me! The subtle changes in the M got me!!!!
Great quiz!
Posted by: becks | October 13, 2009 10:55 PM
19/20. I can’t believe i screwed up on… Toyota! The pressure got too hard at the end :-). Cool quiz.
Posted by: Andreas Lindberg | October 15, 2009 3:36 AM
19/20 defeated by Mattel!
Posted by: Andrew | October 15, 2009 3:27 PM
Lovely. Easy. 20/20. Just look at the lower-case “a”, “s” and “t”. Dead give aways. The strokes always end up with a flat, horizontal edge. On the Caps, harder, look for better, more geometric shapes. Arial’s upper-case “G” is simply a joke.
Posted by: PixelRes | October 16, 2009 11:11 AM
19/20 Toyota got me…:)
Posted by: demog | October 16, 2009 12:48 PM
15/20 with no experience. I just picked the one that looked nicer. Does that mean I have discerning taste? ^_^
Posted by: Chad | October 16, 2009 2:54 PM
20/20 .. I wasn’t sure of mattel, but Toyota’s O is very distinctive of Helvetica.
Posted by: Ahmad | October 16, 2009 2:56 PM
19/20, problems with mattel and Toyota.
Posted by: Baban | October 16, 2009 6:35 PM
Like so many others, blasted Mattel got me. First time I’ve been ashamed to get 19/20.
Posted by: skocko | October 17, 2009 7:54 AM
19/20 - learnt by initial mistake with agfa. Toyota and mattel are all about the A
Posted by: Tomas | October 17, 2009 8:43 AM
As a graphic designer I thought I’d nail this, capital letter fonts are harder to distinguish than I thought! Must get back to my Linotype resources and get some revision in…
Posted by: Matthew Price | October 18, 2009 11:02 AM
18/20 - So Fun! And it was Mattel and Toyota that got me as well.
Posted by: Pete | October 18, 2009 11:33 PM
19/20
I simply looked to see which one was BETTER>>>>
Sure enough, Helvetica didn’t let me down!
MATTEL got me too….
Posted by: julie sadler | October 19, 2009 9:28 AM
17/20
Posted by: Vincent | October 19, 2009 3:42 PM
19/20: Mattel
Terrific quiz! I really appreciate the time it must have taken to recreate the logo with Arial [shudder].
Posted by: ehowes | October 20, 2009 8:46 PM
20/20 Wooooo!!!
Posted by: Maldonado | October 21, 2009 10:52 AM
20/20 n_n
easy
watch for the a’s c’s s’s and e’s
Posted by: bobvetica | October 21, 2009 11:02 AM
19/20 not to bad
Posted by: Mario | October 23, 2009 2:02 PM
18/20, but I biffed Kawasaki on purpose just to see what would happen if I got one wrong. But dang that Mattel!
Posted by: jm | October 23, 2009 6:44 PM
17/20 - Basf/Crate&Barrel/Mattel!!!!!!!!!!! Great Quiz
Posted by: Simon | October 24, 2009 7:21 AM
20/20
Toyota was very difficult.
Posted by: Juan Carlos Campos | October 24, 2009 5:50 PM
20/20,
Staples logo in Arial is missing something important (;
Posted by: James Sterling | October 24, 2009 8:30 PM
19/20,
Toyota was easy enough, but I got stumped by Mattel, as did quite a few.
Posted by: John Russell | October 24, 2009 9:15 PM
All these comments and not one person has mentioned how ridiculous we all are for taking this quiz?!?! Ummm, 19/20 btw…
Posted by: Matt | October 24, 2009 10:33 PM
You can easily spot the t-r-a-c-e-s of Helvetica whenever one of these glyphs appears.
By the way, I think the non-Helvetica Kawasaki logo must have been a hybrid, because its lowercase a’s are not from Arial.
Posted by: Martin | October 25, 2009 12:19 PM
Damn Toyota got me - 19/20. Great quiz!!
Posted by: Mic | October 26, 2009 3:13 AM
Cool Quiz, did just two mistakes in American Airlines and Staples …
Regards
Eric
Posted by: Eric | October 26, 2009 5:43 AM
20/20,
Toyota and Mattel were hard but, for me, were a matter of looking for what looked “right”. For instance, the centre of the “E” in MATTEL is slightly above centre. And the proportion of the “A” in both is better in Helvetica.
Posted by: Mark | October 26, 2009 5:50 AM
19 out of 20, that Mattel one was tough,
it got me too. Good quiz though !
Posted by: ZandtK | October 26, 2009 9:38 AM
19/20—defeated by Mattel.
Posted by: JanO | October 26, 2009 11:19 AM
19/20 — defeated by Mattel.
Posted by: Kristians Sics | October 26, 2009 5:58 PM
Chuck Bigelow I feel as if I failed you. Typography & Page Design for three hours a day, two days a week with a viewing of “Helvetica - The Movie” and I still missed 2! 18/20 - Mattel & Toyota got me.
Posted by: SC | October 26, 2009 9:44 PM
20/20 Woo! the A’s and R’s are dead giveaways to the different typefaces.
Posted by: ashley george | October 27, 2009 1:05 AM
18/20
The lowercase t’s are definitely dead giveaways!
Posted by: Deddy | October 27, 2009 2:56 AM
Beaten by Mattel, but 19/20, the horizontal cutoffs give Helvetica away.
Posted by: Alan M Sherwood | October 27, 2009 5:34 AM
19/20, the first one threw me off and immediately after all that I learned about Helvetica came back and I aced the rest. Helvetica is always aligned and always organized in such a way that every letter, caps or lower, will flow perfectly into the next…and to do that requires perfect symmetrical cut-offs at the ends of figures.
The “G” and “R” almost threw me off. Here’s where Helvetica shows that it’s got strong foundtions. There’s extra character stuff, but it’s image is stronger with that of the baseline than Arial.
Posted by: Heather | October 27, 2009 10:24 AM
20/20 I feel like a nerd…
Posted by: Victor Zuniga | October 27, 2009 4:30 PM
20/20 I feel like a nerd…
Posted by: Victor Zuniga | October 27, 2009 4:32 PM
19/20 American Airlines was my mistake. After that, I spotted huge differences in ‘e’, ‘c’, ‘s’… it was easy when I learned what to look for.
Posted by: vostojin | October 28, 2009 6:56 AM
Wow, I don’t know how I got sucked into taking this quiz. Don’t know much about typography.
But I got 20/20!
Fun quiz, thanks. (I don’t own Helvetica — do you have a downloadable prize???)
Posted by: Joanne | October 28, 2009 11:35 AM
19/20 - Mattel got me…
Posted by: Pencil Pocket | October 29, 2009 7:29 AM
20/20 Yesss
Very Happy with myself, even if i did cheat by looking at the Helvetica letter form on the top bar on my mac tehe :P
Posted by: Andrew Jackson | October 29, 2009 7:30 AM
19/20…fucking TOYOTA :D
Posted by: Julian Gruber | October 29, 2009 2:30 PM
20/20 :)
the Os in arial toyota are less round and does the squeezy thing at the bottom
also in mattel the A is less squared and more skinny
Posted by: nerrrrd | October 29, 2009 2:34 PM
19/20
yup… Toyota and their cheating O’s caught me out :/
Posted by: Stef | October 29, 2009 4:49 PM
fuck you mattel and toyota!
18/20
Posted by: [sCYTHe] | October 29, 2009 6:26 PM
18/20
alas, Toyota and Mattel…
Posted by: Anne | October 29, 2009 7:09 PM
19/20 mattel gave me a hit…
Posted by: ole | October 29, 2009 7:37 PM
18/20 - Mattel, and I seem to be the only person who made a meal of it with The North Face. I talked myself into believing Helvetica had a straight leg on the R. Great quiz, nice work!
Posted by: Dan Pacey | October 31, 2009 4:04 AM
i was ok with mattel - but I got hooked on TOYOTA and BASF - the caps are much harder for me. And like Dan - I didn’t realize the Helvetica R had that curve in it.
Fun quiz!
Posted by: Vicki Rulli | October 31, 2009 11:28 AM
I just scored a perfect 20/20. I had to analyze the differences in the article before, but the was a great exercise for me because i can now identify arial vs helvetica type faces a little better than before.
Posted by: Josh K | October 31, 2009 6:52 PM
19/20. Mattel was the hard one for me.
Posted by: numen | November 1, 2009 9:04 AM
18/20
I was hooked by North face and Toyota. It makes a 90% accuracy, not bad at all, isn’t?
Posted by: Alex Schlechetr | November 1, 2009 7:33 PM
19/20 Mattel…
Posted by: Coert De Dcker | November 2, 2009 11:41 AM
16/20… but what the hell is up the the “R” in target? that’s what threw me off.
Posted by: Mica Semrick | November 2, 2009 11:29 PM
19/20…TOYOTA!
Posted by: Craig | November 3, 2009 2:01 PM
15/20 - fuck
Posted by: cleyton | November 3, 2009 2:08 PM
17 of 20. Mattel is INSANE!
Posted by: Schneider | November 3, 2009 3:09 PM
20/20 Mattel was a total guess
Posted by: Peter Nies | November 3, 2009 6:29 PM
I got 17/20. I learned about design by reading Architectural Digest. I love design AND Helvetica but my real love is math. Not too shabby.
Posted by: MathGirl | November 4, 2009 3:58 AM
20/20 aww yeah, nearly stumped by Toyota, capitals are considerably harder than lower case. :)
Posted by: Lewis Nelson | November 5, 2009 7:58 AM
The all-caps were the hardest to tell apart except for the Gs.
Posted by: richard holmes | November 5, 2009 9:13 PM
18/20
Posted by: richard holmes | November 5, 2009 9:14 PM
18/20, and i’m proud of it, nerdos!
Posted by: Anonymous | November 6, 2009 12:43 PM
20/20 Toyota was the most difficult for me. Mattel was tough too. What that one came down to for me was that the original had better kerning. The Ariel recreation wasn’t kerned as well. Lot’s of the letters are giveaways as everyone has mentioned. Just want to add that the Cap P is also a giveaway. The curve of the counterspace isn’t visually balanced with the outer curve.
Posted by: jason | November 6, 2009 1:16 PM
18/20 MATTEL & TOYOTA!!!
Posted by: sim | November 10, 2009 9:23 AM
MATTEL got me. darn.
Posted by: Paul Cain | November 10, 2009 12:02 PM
20/20
I’m an old lover of Helvetica.
Posted by: anna | November 11, 2009 7:14 AM
18 out of 20. That was fun!
Posted by: Matthew Ryan Sharp | November 11, 2009 2:45 PM
19/20. Darn you Staples!
So much fun! Cool test.
Posted by: Tom | November 11, 2009 8:44 PM
19/20, stupid Mattel. That was a fun quiz!
Posted by: Kris | November 12, 2009 9:42 AM
19/20, Mattel got me too!
Posted by: sita silva | November 14, 2009 9:06 AM
18/20. Mattel and Toyota were so identical
Posted by: john hell | November 17, 2009 1:40 AM
18/20 Mettel and Toyota, like most of you…:)
Posted by: Monika | November 17, 2009 11:51 AM
18/20 Staples and Toyota!
Posted by: Ruediger | November 17, 2009 4:29 PM
18/20
Agfa, it was first and I hesitated about “G”…and Toyota like everybody! :/
Posted by: charlotte | November 19, 2009 2:57 PM
19/20 Mattel got me too!
Posted by: Aias Cienfuegos | November 20, 2009 1:19 AM
16 out of 20…I got defeated on all the ones with all caps with no R.
This is amazing though, we have an ongoing inside joke in my multimedia… the reverence we give that font is unreal, lol.
The common t is a really good give away too, besides the common r and a.
Posted by: rush | November 21, 2009 4:42 PM
Woohoo! 19/20. Dang Mattel got me good.
Posted by: Kristina | November 21, 2009 5:04 PM
I only got 14/20, but I got correct the ones which most didn’t…
Am I the only one who recognized the obvious Pink Floyd “Wish You Were Here” reference?! C’mon, guys!
Lots of fun.
Posted by: Nikk | November 23, 2009 5:07 PM
20/20.. MATTEL the hardest.. far far away… but not impossible
Posted by: Jua | November 25, 2009 11:54 AM
like many of the others. I got stumped on MATTEL and Toyota. I think its the Capital A that threw me off.
Posted by: Robert Miller | November 26, 2009 6:22 AM
Haha! GREAT BLOG!!! It’s not easy, but good indicaters are the small a and s and the big R;-) Made a lot of fun
Posted by: Shirtex | November 29, 2009 6:16 PM
18/20
Haha! GREAT BLOG!!! It’s not easy, but good indicaters are the small a and s and the big R;-) Made a lot of fun
Posted by: Shirtex | November 29, 2009 6:18 PM
19/20 Toyota got me.
Posted by: Jason | December 3, 2009 1:57 PM
15/20
brilliant blog!
Posted by: Hannes | December 4, 2009 9:25 AM
20 of 20! Love Helvetica! =)
Posted by: Leo Bragança | December 6, 2009 7:41 AM
MATTEL KILL ME,,,
Nice quiz
Posted by: Bagus Anggara W | December 7, 2009 4:30 AM
American Airlines and Kawasaki were my killers. It’s funny I found Toyota and Mattel to be ones that jumped right out at me! Funny how different things are noticed by different people.
I do love Helvetica. I noticed the big R’s are different, and the small t’s between them. Yes I am a font geek. No I am not ashamed!!! Awesome quiz. A lot of fun!
Posted by: Jocelyn Wright | December 8, 2009 7:19 AM
MATTEL is the hard one, certainly, for me. Arial’s capital Os are squared off, whereas Helvetica’s are rounded; and pretty much all the other letters have squared off ends in Helvetica and angled in Arial.
Posted by: octopod | December 10, 2009 4:21 PM
18 out of 20
MATTEL & Bell Atlantic
Posted by: Webber | December 11, 2009 2:40 AM
Nice and useful quiz. I’ll propose it to my (typo)students ;^)
Posted by: Fabrizio M. Rossi | December 11, 2009 9:11 AM
I’m not a designer and have not read any help notes. I got 17/20 (got mixed up with one, so it should have been 18) but got both Toyota and Mattel. I used the cap A to distinguish.
Posted by: Candleflower | December 12, 2009 10:33 AM
Got 19 out of 20. The Mattel-logo stumped me (like many others here).
Posted by: Jens Tenhaeff | December 13, 2009 2:58 PM
19/20 Mattel; Grrrr
Posted by: TomK | December 13, 2009 3:10 PM
18 right, Mattel and Toyota wrong - just like many here.
Posted by: Veit | December 13, 2009 6:32 PM
18/20 also got Mattel and Toyota wrong,
what a shame
Posted by: louk | December 17, 2009 7:35 AM
20/20 its easy helvetica is more beautiful ;)
Posted by: Oscar | December 17, 2009 9:01 AM
18/20 and that for a project manager… huhu
Posted by: Stefan | December 18, 2009 6:02 AM
I got 19/20. Missed Mattel. Great quiz! And it affirmed why I HATE Arial. Thanks!
Posted by: Julie | December 19, 2009 7:38 PM
20 for 20!
Posted by: Mick | December 21, 2009 1:15 PM
Got 19/20, missed also Mattel :(
Posted by: Sascha | December 24, 2009 6:47 AM
Got 17 out of 20. Viva la Helvetica!
Posted by: Mjr tom | December 25, 2009 9:13 AM
missed in the north face … because the R … great blog !!!
Posted by: yuri | December 29, 2009 4:04 PM
18/20, shame on me. Helvetica was born and I began loving type and typography. It became the typeface of our school publication and still is. Hermann, Munich/Germany
Posted by: Hermann Aszmoneit | December 30, 2009 4:23 PM
Awesome! 19/20 - Defeated by Mattel.
Posted by: Karthik Abhiram | December 31, 2009 11:20 AM
What an exhausting quiz. Who in the hell can actually tell these apart without being a complete neurotic freak about it?
Posted by: Crazzles | January 4, 2010 5:24 PM
20/20. Got Mattel because I saw during the earlier questions that all the Helveticas were just the slightest bit bolder than the Arials. Got Toyota because I picked the one with the rounder Os, but I think I just got lucky on that one.
Posted by: Graham | January 6, 2010 5:25 PM
Toyota :( 19/20
Posted by: Yury | January 6, 2010 5:58 PM
19/20 . Toyota was the problem, and to be honest, Mattel was a guess. Other 18 were fairly easy. In isolation (without the two side by side) I can’t see how Mattel and Toyota could be anything but guesses. Interesting side note: 31 years ago I wrote software on one of the first computerized photo typesetting programs. I used to live and breath this stuff. The computerized typesetting was a very welcome advance from hot metal (that’s what it was called, because it involved molten lead).
Posted by: Philip | January 9, 2010 11:49 PM
19/20
defeated by Mattel!
Great quiz guys, keep up the good work.
Posted by: Antonio e Concettina | January 11, 2010 4:36 PM
I laugh at you Arial. 20/20
Posted by: Andy | January 12, 2010 5:48 PM
There is just no way you can tell between the two MATTEL logos. They are SOOOO alike. I just got that one incorrect. 19/20 for me!
Posted by: Zain Ally | January 16, 2010 5:45 PM
Can anybody explain my what is different in MATTEL logos? Rest are pretty easy. :) Good quiz. Now I understand fully what is a difference beetwen this two fonts. Definietly i like Helvetica more :)
Posted by: witek | January 17, 2010 3:00 PM
mattel also got me! 19 / 20
Posted by: Maria | January 21, 2010 2:58 AM
19/20. Pesky Toyota.
Ain’t it funny how some of the logos just ‘feel’ better in Helvetica?
Posted by: CrocodileJock | January 21, 2010 4:38 AM
I got 19/20…
Damn you, Toyota!
Posted by: Joey | January 21, 2010 7:26 AM
19/20. Mattel.
Posted by: Mike | January 21, 2010 10:20 AM
First time 11/20 then 20/20, the second time got the characteristic S,A,3 and in for toyota the “o” are more “round”
Posted by: pycior | January 21, 2010 4:28 PM
18/20
Mattell and Toyota defeated me!!!! Very pleased otherwise. Arial is such a horrible typeface.
Posted by: Michael B | January 22, 2010 8:35 AM
19/20 Mattel got me too! Sneaky. Sneaky. Sneaky.
Posted by: Brock G | January 22, 2010 1:56 PM
20/20. Love Helvetica!
Posted by: qing liu | January 23, 2010 11:59 PM
Going just for aesthetics, and answering quite spontaneously I scored 14 out of 20. Not being a designer myself, I’m OK with it.
Posted by: Marco De Luca | January 24, 2010 6:35 AM
Sir,you test has a bug.
when i was confused by one question,
i can right click one of the picture,view the property if it,and the name of the picture betrayed the answer~~~
^_^
Posted by: cdinten | January 27, 2010 4:26 AM
20/20 - But Toyota… it`s not easy!
Posted by: Victor Esteves | January 30, 2010 12:09 AM
20/20 :P Toyota and Mattel were the most difficult ones to spot
Posted by: salil p | January 31, 2010 2:40 AM
19/20
Grillé sur American Airline…
Posted by: Mathieu | January 31, 2010 10:49 AM
I got 18/20. I did wrong at MATTEL and TOYOTA!
Posted by: Matt G | February 1, 2010 1:44 PM
I think it’s just a font name, isn’t it?
Posted by: tjeerd | February 1, 2010 4:56 PM
20/20: Thanks for the exercise! It confirmed my belief that knockoffs just don’t cut it.
Posted by: Joel Neely | February 5, 2010 6:29 AM
19/ 20 scheiß mattel xD
Posted by: mac_the_million | February 10, 2010 5:07 AM
18/20 knowing nothing about either font.
Treat it as a machine learning problem and learn from your mistakes and the observable clues.
Posted by: Leth | February 10, 2010 7:56 AM
19/20
Mattel was really difficult…
But in some cases I thought (shame on me!), the Arial looks better.
Posted by: maculis | February 15, 2010 4:27 AM
Easy enough once you know what to look for, though I got caught by the same two as everyone else. But… the two fonts are indistinquishable in my version of Word (2003). Did MS do away with Helvetica in all but name? Anyone know?
Posted by: dave_t | February 16, 2010 3:13 PM
19/20. (Toyota!)I think maybe the helvetica A’s are less wide then the arial…?
Posted by: Shari B | February 20, 2010 5:53 AM
Got Mattel, but TOYOTA GOT ME !!!
Posted by: Mido Taha | February 22, 2010 8:51 AM
19/20. Guessed on Mattel, but stumped on Toyota. It seems to me that the weights in Arial are not as consistent as they are in Helvetica. The only differences in the Mattel logos are the weights, but it doesn’t seem that Arial is lighter across the board. I also hate Arial’s more open for no good reason capital C.
Posted by: Edward Urgent | February 22, 2010 7:15 PM
19/20. Guessed on Mattel, but stumped on Toyota. It seems to me that the weights in Arial are not as consistent as they are in Helvetica. The only differences in the Mattel logos are the weights, but it doesn’t seem that Arial is lighter across the board. I also hate Arial’s more open for no good reason capital C.
Posted by: Edward Urgent | February 22, 2010 7:16 PM
20/20!
So proud! So f… proud!
So, what do I win?
Posted by: Pawel | February 23, 2010 5:40 AM
20/20 Toyota and Mattel was dificult to identify. Congratulations for the text, it is very interesting.
Posted by: Alexandre Furst | February 23, 2010 10:11 PM
19/20.
Pfft, MATTEL! D:
Posted by: Sabrina | February 27, 2010 1:58 AM
19/20 - the cursive ‘National’ tricked me.
Toyota was easy: Just spot the ‘o’s - Helvetica ones look much more constructed. This is also a good example that despite Arial has nicer single characters they look significantly less fine tuned for working together when beeing combined to a whole text.
Posted by: T$ | February 28, 2010 8:18 PM
18/20. Failed with Basf and the damned Mattel.
Posted by: Monica | March 2, 2010 5:12 PM
god dam mattel, 19 out of 20!
Posted by: Howard Taylor | March 9, 2010 10:28 AM
19/20… failed with Toyotaaa… :P
Posted by: Maru Briones | March 9, 2010 2:05 PM
sólo falle en Toyota. Que buen test me deja muy satisfecho.
Posted by: Hugo Marin | March 13, 2010 11:54 AM
I got 14/20.
And I considered myself as absolute Helvetica Lover. Therefore, it was quiet surprising for me, to fail that hard.
Toyota and Matell were indeed the hardest to guess, but I also had troubles with Stapels. I found everything, that contained a C ,was very easy to solve, because of the opening.
Posted by: Markus | March 15, 2010 5:53 AM
I got 14/20, and I always considered myself as a Helvetica Lover.
Anyway, I mainly failed on everything with an A, so MATELL and TOYOTA were not that easy for me either.On the other hand, I found everything with a C quiet easy to figure out.
Posted by: Markus | March 15, 2010 5:59 AM
Did good. 20/20.
Posted by: Daniel | March 15, 2010 6:12 AM
Comprender la importancia del origen del diseño tipográfico es fundamental para todo diseñador gráfico; y este test es un buen elemento para comprenderlo. Lo básico no sólo es revisar los trazos de la tipografía de caja baja, lo difícil es revisar los trazos de la tipografía de caja alta.
Gracias por compartir esta información.
Posted by: Eduardo Zambrano Cerezo | March 16, 2010 10:39 PM
18/20
I figured out the difference 1/3 of the way through. The ends of Helvetica in t’s, c’s, s’s, etc., are straight edges. Arial’s are diagonal. If that makes sense. haha.
Figured it out at Bell Atlantic, which I got wrong… and Toyota. That one was a toughie.
Posted by: mh | March 19, 2010 2:32 PM
Failed with 17 wrong out of twenty!!!
That raised a question. I’ve read long time ago that Arial is the cheaper copy of helvetica. But in this test I judged by intuition. So instead of analysing the design of the letters I choosed the one that looks more appealing or clearer to me in a timespan of 2 to 5 seconds. If Arial is the cheaper copy why did I almost always choose it? Is it because I see it more often than the real helvetica?
Or because I am a programmer and not a designer :)
Posted by: Bjorn | March 25, 2010 3:02 PM
Passed 20 out of 20.
Almost failed on Toyota and Mattel.
Posted by: Mitchell Geere | March 26, 2010 9:51 AM
15/20
I found all the ones in Caps difficult.
Head down in shame as I am a graphic designer by trade!
Posted by: Anil Amrit | March 26, 2010 12:18 PM
19/20. Damn that Mattel one.
Posted by: Sami | March 27, 2010 1:23 PM
16/20
Letraset learned me to recognise and to see the visual space between letters
how boring it was…LOL
Helvetica straight geometry, bolder and looks better; the slanted Arial cut has legibility for lc but not beauty
Posted by: Mirel Goldenberg | March 29, 2010 4:49 AM
Wow I must be the only honest one here with a measly, but truthful score of 12/20. Seriously guys!
Posted by: alyssa | March 30, 2010 11:40 PM
=D
Posted by: Nany | April 5, 2010 2:50 PM
nice!
Posted by: Praveen | April 7, 2010 5:03 AM
19/20 TOYOTA got me!
Posted by: KGB | April 11, 2010 6:59 AM
19/20. I did wrong Kawasaky :(
Posted by: richardst | April 15, 2010 12:17 PM
19/20
HAHAHA, MATTEL was the word thet got me, lol, I couldn’t difference between its letters but, that’s good
Posted by: Marco F.V. | April 19, 2010 7:59 PM
19/20 ofcourse MATTEL ;)
Posted by: fresh2death | May 3, 2010 2:35 PM
20/20 - When I was 7 or 8 years old, I would call out the names of the typefaces on all the buildings and billboards. I used to go to my father’s office and read books of type specimens. Helvetica just has a meticulous geometric purity that Arial lacks.
Posted by: Maxx Daymon | May 14, 2010 12:01 PM
19/20
Like others, MATTEL was the only one that got me! My love for Helvetica and distaste for Arial is fortified!
Posted by: Lindsey P | May 17, 2010 9:37 PM
Yeah, MATTEL almost got me too!
Posted by: edMaga | May 20, 2010 12:21 AM
I got 20/20.
Very nice test. Good performance. Fun practice.
TOYOTA will not difficult choice for you if you will see ‘%’ matching (Helvetica have more like circles percentages and so ‘O’ alike ).
MATTEL.. thing! But if you take step aside then it seems what the original one is more slender. Helvetica is better well-proportioned.
Posted by: Dmitry | May 21, 2010 5:13 PM
Interesante test
Posted by: analia zanandrea | May 29, 2010 8:12 AM
4/20
I had no idea which was which at the start, but at least I was fairly consistent with my guessing ;)
(I’d guessed that the slant at the end of ‘r’, the thinner lines, and the slope-topped ‘t’ were Helvetica…)
Posted by: The King of Wrong | June 2, 2010 7:30 AM
got 20/20
some point : helvetica have horizontal line, arial doesn’t
M in helvetica has thinner branch in the middle than arial
Y in helvetica has shorter trunk than arial :p
Posted by: alijaya | June 11, 2010 3:52 AM
Nice test - Toyota and Matel - just the same…
Posted by: Zauberer | July 4, 2010 4:21 PM
VIVA HELVETICA!
Posted by: marcelo | July 6, 2010 12:08 PM
19/20 Like many others, Mattel got me. I was able to figure out Toyota somehow, but, it was tough. Strange thing is I think the “Y” gave it away to me. The difference on Mattel for me was the “M.” I couldn’t remember which was which and guessed wrong.
Posted by: Jimmy P | July 26, 2010 3:00 PM
20/20 Hells yeah! Mattel was definitely tough, but Helvetica’s balance revealed itself. Ditto with Toyota.
Posted by: Abrxas | July 26, 2010 4:11 PM
20/20 yeah baby! I agree with previous comments though that both Mattel and Toyota are hard to decipher.
Posted by: Tom Dabner | July 28, 2010 9:58 AM
I got 19/20
beaten by TOYOTA
Posted by: Vahid Namvari | July 31, 2010 2:58 PM
I got 19/20
beaten by TOYOTA
Posted by: Vahid Namvari | July 31, 2010 3:01 PM
Hmm.. 16/20 … looks like I could use a little more work..
Posted by: Steve | August 11, 2010 1:34 AM
20/20. MATTEL was a bit of a challenge, but I took the quiz with my glasses off.
Posted by: Dan | August 19, 2010 9:50 AM
18 out of 20 Toyota screwed me.
Posted by: Anthony Pace | August 21, 2010 3:28 PM
19 of 20 defeated by digital
Posted by: Jagaddewa | August 29, 2010 12:51 AM
Bla, I missed out on Mattel too. And Staples -_- I thought the more-rounded ‘e’ would belong to Helvetica, not Arial. I got Toyota though! :D
Posted by: chimpy | August 29, 2010 1:45 PM
Great quiz!
18/20: Toyota and Mattel wrong :)
Cheers from Portugal
Posted by: Joao Nunes | September 10, 2010 1:36 PM
20/20 words with c and s are simple. Mattel was tricky
Posted by: David | September 22, 2010 10:43 AM
19 out of 20. Curse you Mattel!
Posted by: Steve b | October 12, 2010 9:31 PM
20/20 the most difficult was Toyota.
In all doubts, the “A”, “t”, “e” and “r” saved the action. Greetings from Portugal.
Posted by: Sofia | October 25, 2010 8:20 AM
20/20 - the most difficult was Toyota.
In all doubts, the “A”, “t”, “e” and “r” saved the action. Greetings from Portugal.
Posted by: Sofia L | October 25, 2010 8:41 AM
fuckin’ mattel and toyota. uppercase is very similar
Posted by: krom | November 6, 2010 10:45 AM
20/20, baby! I got stuck on the Mattel logo, but it’s totally obvious when you look at the 3M and North Face logos. Arial is such an ugly font….
Posted by: Jack Edwards | November 10, 2010 8:11 PM
19/20 Mattel got me.
Posted by: Cinezaster | November 11, 2010 11:42 AM
19/20, TOYOTA got me but then again I got lucky on MATTEL, lol.
Posted by: TR | November 12, 2010 9:55 AM
20/20! MATTEL was so tricky. But watch the M :)
Posted by: diki satya | November 15, 2010 5:44 AM
19/20, for some reason Post-it got me, I was fine on Toyota and Mattel, though.
Posted by: Eden | November 15, 2010 10:31 PM
19/20! Damn you Mattel!
Posted by: Jason | November 16, 2010 7:10 PM
19/20 Damn Mattel
Posted by: John | November 17, 2010 12:08 AM
YOU ROCK!!!
Posted by: Anonymous | November 19, 2010 4:25 AM
20/20! Mattel was the only one that wasn’t obvious… the L made the difference.
Posted by: Mitchell | November 27, 2010 12:16 PM
Got 19, and the TOYOTA trademark chosen wrong.hah~
Posted by: asnahu | December 7, 2010 9:51 PM
18/20 Mattel and Toyota.
Fun way to sharpen the old typographic eye.
More please.
Posted by: Robert Merola | December 15, 2010 12:07 PM
“I spotted 19 of the 20 - I was defeated by Mattel.”
IDEM! - Great quiz ;)
Posted by: Luca Laruffa | December 21, 2010 2:32 PM
19/20, bloody Staples got me :/
University finally paid off haha
Posted by: adam pritchard | December 28, 2010 8:44 AM
19/20, bloody Staples got me :/
University finally paid off haha
Posted by: adam pritchard | December 28, 2010 8:46 AM
19/20 — Mattel tripped me up. LOL On the Toyota one, I just happen to drive a Toyota, so I think that probably helped. Excellent idea for a quiz — enjoyed taking it! :-)
BTW, I’ve always hated Arial. When I got to where I’d had it up to here with Windows and switched from Windows to Linux 6 years ago today, seeing Helvetica or something resembling it, even if under another name, pleased me no end (it’s “Nimbus Sans L” in PCLinuxOS).
Posted by: Fred McKinney | January 5, 2011 4:30 PM
I think as a designer u cant really miss the difference. Its more huge that it seems. Arial it’s just grose.
Posted by: meli | January 6, 2011 8:40 AM
19 /20
Damn you Mattel
Posted by: Yemptx | January 7, 2011 11:46 AM
20/20 easy
Posted by: modi | January 15, 2011 5:51 AM
17/20
The slight differences between the fonts were easy to spot, just recalling which name went with which font was the hard part. :P
Helvetica seems to have straighter edges in its curved letters/numbers (e,r,c,3,s)
Posted by: Alexander Dewar | January 17, 2011 11:33 AM
20/20. That’s a great test!
Posted by: Paulo Meireles | January 19, 2011 2:01 PM
I got 20 out of 20 questions correctly. In the TOYOTA logo the O’s are not of Helvetica. Other than that it was simple. I just picked the logo that looked right for TOYOTA.
Posted by: Ryan Kartheiser | January 22, 2011 2:08 PM
17/20 Toyota, Mattel, and (sob) American Airlines. Great quiz.
Posted by: htom | February 5, 2011 12:32 AM
19/20… I should have noticed Helvetica’s distinctive longer “O.”
Posted by: Charmaine | February 5, 2011 6:13 PM
20/20
:), I´m just learning
Posted by: Fernanda Núñez | February 12, 2011 6:59 PM
18/20, fooled by toyota and basf, still fairly pleased
Posted by: Anonymous | February 14, 2011 5:41 AM
20/20
Very good!!! great test!!!
Posted by: Patricio Scarabotti | February 14, 2011 1:52 PM
20/20
Doing the test a few times, just learned the differences.. TOYOTA was the annoying one… :)
Posted by: Dani Rubio | February 16, 2011 9:05 PM
Fun quiz!
I took the quiz twice, both times as quickly as possible.
First score was 16/20 American Airlines, Basf, Mattel, Staples.
Second score was 19/20 Mattel.
Good reminder of how different these fonts really are. After reading the comments I love how tricky Mattel apparently is.
Also, I’ve never hated Arial but to me this quiz has made it more obvious how nostalgic Helvetica is by far the better choice for logotypes (more balanced/more impact/just better looking).
Reminds me of car designs. While a new Mini might be best for some of today’s purposes a classic Mini will always look awesome.
Posted by: letterman | February 23, 2011 7:00 AM
F*king MATTEL logo (19/20) I should have paid more attention to the kerning.
Posted by: PabloFerroDesign | February 24, 2011 12:14 PM
20/20.
I love Helvetica and now this is proof.
Just came across this quiz while browsing and this feels really good.
Posted by: Pramod Maharana | February 27, 2011 11:57 AM
18/20 I thought I knew Helvetica :-(
Posted by: Jaime Vasquez | March 2, 2011 6:15 PM
Defeated by Mattel too. :-) Nice Quiz
Posted by: Gez | March 2, 2011 10:26 PM
19 of 20. Mattel beat me as well.
I think that in our workplaces where Windows machines dominate, we get used to seeing that non-Helvetica font.
Ho hum.
Posted by: Paul Grosse | March 14, 2011 2:58 AM
20/20
Mattel almost got me, but I went with my gut and got it right.
Posted by: Marshall | March 25, 2011 12:33 AM
Beaten by Mattel. I’m pretty good at spotting it but Mattel got me with their all caps.
Posted by: Mandie Moustache | April 4, 2011 5:38 PM
20/20 but is wrong, isn’t Helvetica because the Helvetica have the letter a more elongated -.-
Posted by: Duque | April 5, 2011 5:51 AM
I did pretty good. The numbers and lowercase letters were easy to spot, but it was tough with the uppercase letters.
Posted by: Beverly McGhee | April 6, 2011 2:07 PM
also defeated by Mattel. grrrrr
Posted by: mana | April 11, 2011 9:19 AM
20/20
It’s easy, Helvetica makes me want to choke, Arial just makes me want to puke.
Posted by: Spinly Mcgee | April 13, 2011 5:06 PM
19/20 MATTEL as so many before.
This is a fun quiz, yet not too difficult for typomaniacs.
It was an especially awful thing to look at 3M in Arial!
Posted by: Simon Wehr | April 14, 2011 5:04 AM
20/20 baby!!!
Posted by: Lucian Iorga | April 14, 2011 9:04 AM
20/20 baby!!!
Posted by: lucian iorga | April 14, 2011 9:05 AM
19/20
Toyota got the better of me!
Posted by: Lauren | April 24, 2011 6:12 PM
I got 20/20, the mattel one nearly got me though. Only Arial can make Helvetica pretty by comparison IMO
Posted by: RichardKSavage | April 26, 2011 10:24 AM
Fantastic idea! Excellent quiz. I made 19 out of 20 - MATTEL was the wrong choice.
Posted by: Vladimir | April 27, 2011 4:45 PM
20/20
The easiest was BASF, It’s amazing how the -product’s elegance- changes when its logo is set in Helvetica or Arial.
Hardest was TOYOTA, I must admit Arial matches well there.
Posted by: Maximiliano Sproviero | April 28, 2011 2:03 PM
Toyota and AGFA got me :) 18 / 20
Posted by: Edgar Leijs | May 11, 2011 3:05 AM
19/20 the italic and low res of the National logo got me. But the all caps ones were hard. 3rRtesc tended to be the letters that gave good hits. I dislike arial more than I did for the c angles on the ends. Good test though. Wonder how many people in a company with that logo would do?
Posted by: Tristan bailey | May 11, 2011 3:38 AM
20/20! Graphic design education paying off..
Posted by: enits | May 11, 2011 9:58 AM
20 out 20! it rocks!
Posted by: Francky | May 11, 2011 12:07 PM
I am so embarrassed. 19 out of 20.
Posted by: Isabel | May 12, 2011 3:29 AM
Mattel got me as well. 19 of 20!!
Posted by: maria maza brualla | May 12, 2011 10:02 AM
12 out of 20. lol I had no idea they were that close. The ones I got right were because of pattern matching based on the ones I got wrong, not because of any familiarity with either. My favourite font is Lucida Casual.
-ken-
Posted by: Ken Kennedy | May 12, 2011 11:05 AM
18/20, seems that I’m the only one who missed American Apparels? Hahahaha. And Toyota too!
Posted by: Allcor | May 12, 2011 11:39 AM
20/20, Toyota and Mattel where the most difficult ones, but easy enough to spot when you realize the difference lies in the roundness of the O and the distance in the arms of the E
Posted by: Matt | May 12, 2011 7:11 PM
19/20 Staples got me.
In hindsight I should have spotted it… Never mind.
Posted by: Michael Rommel | May 13, 2011 7:08 PM
19/20
kawasaki… aaargh!!! big mistake
Posted by: partagas | May 16, 2011 9:07 AM
I was surprised at how nice the lower-case t is in Arial as opposed to Helvetica. I incorrectly guessed one of the early pairs on that basis, and used the mistake to correctly identify Helvetica afterward. Brilliant game.
Posted by: rob haskins | May 22, 2011 12:57 PM
Missed Mattel…
Posted by: ruth | June 1, 2011 12:59 PM
IT’S ACTUALLY REALLY EASY
The t’s, c’s, and G’s are WAYYYYYY different. Plus, you can tell which logo is redone because the kerning sucks.
Posted by: writingeek | June 5, 2011 2:14 PM
19/20. Was also done in by Mattel.
Posted by: King Pigeon | June 8, 2011 9:44 PM
19/20
… Mattel again. :-)
Posted by: Lea Hummer | June 16, 2011 9:47 AM
20/20. The only hard ones were Toyota and Mattel, just look for the S’s and G’s and it should be easy.
Posted by: Jman1118 | June 18, 2011 12:31 PM
Not bad, 19 correct. It was difficult with Mattel
Posted by: Marijou | July 8, 2011 12:38 PM
Yay! 20/20. Mattel & Toyota were too close.
Posted by: Naveed | July 9, 2011 11:06 AM
20/20. Mattel was tough. That was almost by instinct. Toyota wasn’t that tough. The O is rounder in the real logo. Even if Helvetica’s O weren’t round, the designer would have made it round.
Posted by: johnk | July 31, 2011 1:36 PM
20/20… Not sure about mattel… Lucky guess.. it’s on the “E”… Same as toyota… But what I remembered is not the helvetica/arial… It is the original logo… Thanks for the hints: the original is helvetica…
Posted by: Maruli | August 1, 2011 2:45 AM
I got 19/20, too. Mattel got me as well. The Toyota logotype is actually constructed and not truly Helvetica. The “S” in Staples looks modified from Helvetica.
Posted by: Brad Blackman | August 8, 2011 1:12 PM
Hello,
This quiz was fun. Thank you.
I scored 20/20.
The most difficult ones were for me :
- Mattel (I guessed right because
I found the kerning for Arial was amiss)
- Toyota (I guessed right because
the Helvetica logo is just so familiar)
The others I found easier because of
obvious shape differences (capital G,
lowercase t, digit 3, etc).
Posted by: Ronan Melennec | September 8, 2011 12:48 PM
19/20
I missed Mattel,
I not spend to much time with, perhaps if I looking more scrutinize…
Excellent quiz!
p.s. using Arial in replacing of Helvetica is a blasphemy!
Posted by: tomas | October 1, 2011 5:46 AM
Hate you MATTEL!!
got stuck with toyota, but could spot the diferrence between the 2 ‘O’…..
and i score 19 on 20!
Posted by: Purva Sawant | October 6, 2011 4:02 AM
I got 20 out of 20! But I am a Virgo…
Posted by: Emmapeeldallas | October 6, 2011 4:56 PM
20/20, yay!
The only one I really struggled about was Toyota, others were relatively easy.
Great test!
Posted by: B. | November 2, 2011 7:56 AM
20/20 Huzzah! Though the MATTEL one was a slight guess :)
Posted by: Pretinama | November 12, 2011 12:55 PM
20/20 B-) I’m proud of myself :D :D
Many of you said, you had problems with Mattel, 3M or toyota… Just take a look on the M in mattel and 3M - :) especially beside the 3 the M looks much more natural and aesthetic when typed with helvetica. and at toyota you can differ it when you look at O - helvetica has it more closer to a simple circle at the outer stroke as well as at the inner one.
Posted by: Cunik | November 16, 2011 7:19 AM
I scored 19 of 20. Mattel was the problem;)
Posted by: Stephan | November 27, 2011 1:45 PM
20/20 :)
..have to credit this great article!
http://ilovetypography.com/2007/10/06/arial-versus-helvetica/
Posted by: Prithi | November 27, 2011 4:31 PM
15/20
Not so bad!
Posted by: ana444 | November 29, 2011 3:09 PM
18/20 stuck on Mattel and Toyota.
Posted by: Anonymous | December 13, 2011 4:01 PM
20 out of 20, just need to know where to look, when in doubt, pick the best looking one!
Posted by: Gijs de Koning | December 20, 2011 9:44 AM
18 / 20
I had difficulties with Lufthansa and National :(
Focus on the e and E :)
small e has a straight (er) end (also for the a)
large E has a smaller middle stripe
Posted by: Richard | December 20, 2011 10:06 AM
18/20! The Mattel one was hard!
Posted by: me | January 10, 2012 3:59 PM
20/20 Arial just doesnt come close. even without looking for the slanting ends of letters the helvetica ones just look more solid and well formed. The O’s in arial arn’t round either
Posted by: Will | January 11, 2012 8:40 AM
I got only 14 of 20 :(
Posted by: dc | January 31, 2012 12:49 AM
19/20 MATTEL was the culprit as well.
Sorry I didn’t read all the posts, but noticed most everyone had the same problem.
Makes me wonder if one can argue that Arial actually looks better in all caps (blasphemous?) than Helvetica when properly kerned.
When I couldn’t figure out which was Helvetica, I went with the one I felt was more visually appealing, as in more balanced weight against the burst graphic and appropriately sized “M”, etc. I mean, it should be a 50/50 chance on that one, and if most everyone is choosing Arial, well…
Posted by: Larry Smith | February 13, 2012 3:38 PM
19/20 Also tricked by MATTEL - what would Barbie think?
Posted by: Adrian Green | February 14, 2012 10:09 PM
18-20, i missed STAPLES and LUFTHANSA
Posted by: Ivan | February 23, 2012 1:58 AM
18 de 20 solo me confundio la palabra mattel y toyota :p
Posted by: ANGELYK | March 4, 2012 7:41 PM
19-20 me derroto MATTEL
Posted by: Difusión Creativa | March 6, 2012 2:07 PM
19/20 conmigo jugo fue Toyota :P
Posted by: Aymara Manrique | March 6, 2012 2:13 PM
De acuerdo con los que dijeron que MATTEL y TOYOTA y 3M, pero viendo la “t”, la “G” y la “S”, se hizo más fácil.
Posted by: jerry | March 6, 2012 4:22 PM
Got them all bar MATTEL, and I so thought I had that right. Darn it……
Posted by: marcus | March 13, 2012 7:28 PM
19/20. Staples got me.
Posted by: ray | March 16, 2012 12:53 PM
20/20 My typography teacher will be proud of me♡Very good test!! Thank you!
Posted by: SAHO | April 10, 2012 10:12 AM
I learned a lot! This game is fantastic!! :D
Posted by: Ana Moreno | April 17, 2012 7:09 PM
I got 18/20. I also missed the Mattel one.
Also, in all the logos, I noticed the lowercase A does not have the pronounced foot you’re supposed to see in Helvetica. So a lot of times I fell back to looking for the slanted T or the tightly closed C to determine which was which.
Good quiz though!
Posted by: limon zerga | April 18, 2012 2:19 PM
19 out of 20, MATTEL tripped me up.
Posted by: PrintProofapp | April 23, 2012 10:45 AM
got 18 out of 20. Could not differentiate in two which were very close.
Posted by: sushil bharwani | April 28, 2012 10:27 AM
I got 19 of 20, I couldn’t distinguish between the toyota logos.
Posted by: Jose Luis | May 6, 2012 1:30 AM
15/20
Well I tried and didn’t too too bad, at least Mattel didn’t catch me out
Posted by: Chris | May 13, 2012 2:42 PM
I got 19 of 20, did I go wrong between the logos of Toyota.
Posted by: Galismarte Crisci | May 16, 2012 4:01 PM
19-20
Mattel was hard but managed to get it but i got Toyota wrong. should have looked closer at the kerning!!! do’h! great quiz though.
Posted by: Carl Coops | May 18, 2012 5:24 AM
Mattel stole my 20/20 :( Damn barbies!
Posted by: Lee | May 19, 2012 1:12 AM
20/20 The hardest one for me was Mattel. 3M was really obvious, though.
Posted by: Brian | June 16, 2012 5:28 PM
19/20. Missed Toyota - the Helv O is rounder than the Arial O, apparently. It all adds up to Helvetica being a nicer face than Arial!
Posted by: Michael | June 19, 2012 7:43 PM
18/20. Toyota and…American Airlines!? How’d THAT one slip past me?
Posted by: Craig | June 20, 2012 11:18 AM
20/20 I almost got stumped on Toyota, and to be entirely honest, I thought I picked the wrong one. Yay!
Doesn’t hurt that I’ve been playing Helvetica Vs Arial all day!
Posted by: Alison | June 22, 2012 12:38 PM
Like many on this board, I readily admit that I easily could’ve missed Mattel and Toyota. I definitely picked up some useful distinctions along the way, though.
Posted by: Scott | June 22, 2012 5:59 PM
19/20. missed TOYOTA - it’s sometimes difficult to tell Helvetica and Ariel apart, esp. in the uppercase.
anyway, they’re till some subtle differences, such as the arrangement and layout of ‘O’ or ‘Y’, the former is rounder in Helvetica; the later the shape and proportion on each part will tell you the difference.
Posted by: David | June 24, 2012 4:59 AM
19/20. missed TOYOTA - it’s difficult to tell Helvetica and Ariel apart in the uppercase.
anyway, they’re till some subtle differences, such as the arrangement and layout of character ‘O’ and ‘Y’, the former is rounder in Helvetica; the later the shape and proportion on each part will tell you the difference.
Posted by: David | June 24, 2012 5:02 AM
19 out of 20 - missed MATTEL - tricky angle perception
Posted by: iOSXPC | June 27, 2012 11:57 PM
19/20
I got Mattel right. I spotted the narrower A of Helvetica. And I picked the narrower A for Toyota again. But the test tells me I’m wrong. What’s up with that? Are you sure the test is not faulty? Because it’s counter-intuitive to have to pick the wider A for Toyota.
Posted by: edgepixel | July 4, 2012 3:40 AM
19/20. I agree with the poster edgepixel. Can anyone clarify our doubt?
Posted by: Pratham | July 15, 2012 3:46 AM
7/20 Ha!
Posted by: nate | August 6, 2012 10:23 AM
Seems like almost everyone got beat by Mattel! (And Staples for me.) 18/20.
Posted by: Shiv | August 14, 2012 8:50 AM
20/20. Gut feel. One toyota looked genuine and the other one fake. Thanks, it was fun.
Posted by: Sergey | August 27, 2012 4:57 AM
20/20. Gut feel. One toyota looked genuine and the other one fake. Thanks, it was fun.
Posted by: Sergey | August 27, 2012 4:59 AM
20/20: Smart quiz, the last options were the most difficult, but Helvetica is more symmetric and geometric with superb spacing. Small hint: Observe the ends of the “S” AND “C” letters very carefully, they have each other a parallel orientation. Kerning and symmetry can reveal the beautiful shapes of Helvetica. Well done!
Posted by: Casperio | August 27, 2012 2:44 PM
Mattel was a tough one! 17 of 20.
Posted by: Todd Temple | August 29, 2012 8:46 AM
19/20, Mattel was the one that got away! :)
Posted by: Lucía | August 29, 2012 5:59 PM
20/20, Got it. Mattel and Totota were tough, but made it. Amazing Quiz :)
Posted by: koti | August 30, 2012 3:15 AM
19/20. Mattel got me, too, but I learned my lesson. Helvetica seems a tad ‘fatter’.
Posted by: Ben Capozzi | August 31, 2012 1:59 PM
To all you ‘19/20’ designer font fan boys, i am an amateur designer (no formal training) and i got just 8 out of 20. As a ‘consumer’, who’s opinions do you think matters more, mine or yours? ;)
Posted by: Dave | September 12, 2012 11:57 PM
19/20 TOYOTA got me, but I think that the letter “O” is very circular like Futura. Helvetica, as I have in mind, uses more condensed “O”. Anyway, the right answer in TOYOTA question is much better designed that the wrong one.
Posted by: Christos Kentrotis | October 4, 2012 4:14 PM
One more thing. I also agree with the poster edgepixel. The letter “O” in TOYOTA isn’t helvetica. It must have been edited from the designer.
Posted by: Christos Kentrotis | October 4, 2012 4:25 PM
19/20 TOYOTA was really heard, I thought Helvetica was the one that had the narrower hole in the letter A, worked for me in some of the other logos. Also, in some of the logos like TOYOTA, MATTEL and 3M, most people would not have been able to know the difference.
Posted by: Joshua Vargas | October 25, 2012 6:13 AM
20/20! And it wasn’t even hard for me. Arial has many “tells”. The t in particular is ugly.
I was livid recently when the marketing department at my job put Arial on the cover of one of my reports lol.
Posted by: Nick | November 5, 2012 11:09 PM
19/20. Mattel got me.
Posted by: Ed | November 30, 2012 6:27 AM
Toyota killed me too :(
19/20
Posted by: rafael | November 30, 2012 12:10 PM
19/20 I got done in by a Toyota. I think I’ll pay better attention to those O’s next time.
Posted by: Steven H | January 5, 2013 3:01 PM
mattel trolling me a little 20/20( in mexico says chiripa)
Posted by: Baskerville hound | January 8, 2013 5:59 PM
20/20 WOW
Mattel was tricky though!
Posted by: Mahesh Aravind | January 20, 2013 8:49 AM
20/20 WOW
Mattel and Toyota was tricky, though
Posted by: Mahesh Aravind | January 20, 2013 8:52 AM
16/20. Thought I did really well until I saw other people’s scores. Perhaps I’m experiencing the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Posted by: Tony Locke | January 20, 2013 8:52 AM
11/20 based purely on visual memory of brand logos, not anything to do with knowledge of fonts.
Posted by: Uncompetative | January 20, 2013 9:00 AM
17/20
Failed Kawasaki, Mattel and American Airlines
Posted by: Subrat Meher | January 20, 2013 9:47 AM
20/20 - easy :D
Some of them I chose just on visual preference (which looked better to me)
Posted by: Evaldas | January 20, 2013 9:55 AM
19/20 Got the MATTEL one wrong. Still can’t see the difference to be honest. The rest was dead easy.
Posted by: remo | January 20, 2013 11:23 AM
Damn Mattel, was tough as hell. But still 19 out of 20.
Posted by: John | January 20, 2013 11:54 AM
Darn, 15/20. Missed AA, Kawasaki, North Face, Lufthansa, and Staples. Guess I better stay out of graphic design.
Posted by: Ginger Mayerson | January 20, 2013 12:33 PM
Darn, 15/20. Missed AA, Kawasaki, North Face, Lufthansa, and Staples. Guess I better stay out of graphic design.
Posted by: Ginger Mayerson | January 20, 2013 12:38 PM
I have scored 18/20. I failed to recognize two of them because they are almost identical.
Posted by: Kranthi Lakum | January 20, 2013 1:43 PM
15/20. And I felt it was an achievement!
Posted by: krmboya | January 20, 2013 1:50 PM
I got 13/20. The Mattel one was tough!
Posted by: Silver Fang | January 20, 2013 2:54 PM
16/20
Panasonic, BASF, MATTEL and Kawasaki
Posted by: lunamystry | January 20, 2013 3:22 PM
15/20 But I have no typographic knowledge besides casual computer use. So there were a few guess. The capital A was the biggest giveaway for a lot of them. I got Mattel even because of the A. The angles and dimensions on Arial seemed squatter; Helvetica A seemed more balanced.
Posted by: 13ryan | January 20, 2013 3:37 PM
17/20
Posted by: ali | January 20, 2013 3:40 PM
19/20 - Missed Toyota. I didn’t know the rules on the “O” for Helvetica.
Posted by: Nathan Hammond | January 20, 2013 3:49 PM
85
Posted by: Kenneth Parrish | January 20, 2013 3:54 PM
17/20
I went into this with no idea what the differences really are, but caught on quickly.
Posted by: Anonymous | January 20, 2013 4:53 PM
19/20 Mattel got me!
Posted by: Carlos | January 20, 2013 4:58 PM
20/20. Suck it Arial.
Posted by: Blake | January 20, 2013 6:41 PM
20/20 I didn’t pay attention to any of the logos and the first one was a guess. Once I knew it was right, I simply matched the tiny differences for subsequent questions. The tiny differences were the angle at which the characters finished the stroke like “r”, “c”, “g”, and “e” which always end aligned to either the vertical or the horizontal axis. For MATTEL, you had to use the font weight since all the capital letters meet the above requirement in both fonts.
Posted by: Anonymous | January 20, 2013 6:51 PM
17/20 as a total muggle in design with only a steadfast believe that “helvetica is the nicer one”.
Posted by: LUKE484 | January 20, 2013 7:09 PM
17/20 as a total muggle in design with only a steadfast believe that “helvetica is the nicer one”.
Posted by: LUKE484 | January 20, 2013 7:11 PM
19/20 as well Mattel .. got me.
Arial is a poor cousin indeed.
Posted by: Anonymous | January 20, 2013 7:21 PM
20/20 I had great Typography Professors from Tidewater Community College. Heather Boone & Germane Clair.
Posted by: Charles R. Williamson Jr. | January 20, 2013 7:28 PM
18/20 — Should have studied the M in Mattel. I think the lower text in Staples through me off.
Posted by: Justin | January 20, 2013 7:46 PM
20/20. As unscientific as this is Mattel started out difficult until I noticed how gross the M looked in the Arial version, and this was the same for the “o” in Toyota (but that one was tough). I couldn’t always rely on weight because Helvetica varies, though.
Posted by: Laura | January 20, 2013 8:02 PM
17 out of 20
Helvetica’s bold is bolder. Staples didn’t have the ® in Arial, and the F in The North Face was rendered wrong.
Posted by: Gaelan | January 20, 2013 8:33 PM
19/20 and done on by Mattel…seems to be a popular one to stumble on…
Posted by: Thomas | January 20, 2013 8:53 PM
Like everyone, got tripped up by Mattel (19/20). I had no idea which was which, but I figured the narrower and newer looking font was Arial. For what it’s worth, I think Arial looks cleaner and ‘better’ than Helvetica.
Posted by: bilby | January 20, 2013 9:28 PM
17/20. I didn’t know what the quiz was about until I reached the 6th question.
Posted by: random | January 20, 2013 10:07 PM
16/20, having no idea at the beginning of the difference, but being a quick learner…
Posted by: Mayson | January 20, 2013 11:13 PM
19/20 - MATTEL ..
Toyota was close too, could’ve gone either way.
but, What you going to do about block caps!?
Arial is a “clone” of Helvetica, so what’s the fuss about? The R is probably the most dramatic deviation, if dramatic is even suitable.
Get back to work!
Posted by: Jason | January 20, 2013 11:35 PM
Hey so I don’t think this was brought up in the comments, but some of those logos that you copied in Arial are using a slightly different black. Like the Post-It and Scotch ones in particular. Really easy to spot if you tilt your monitor or get an angle on viewing them.
Otherwise great quiz! Got 19/20… Mattel…!
Posted by: Tom | January 21, 2013 12:02 AM
You answered 19 out of 20 questions correctly.
Posted by: Aakar | January 21, 2013 1:34 AM
20/20 - It is easy when you know what to look - the URL of the logos. It says which logo is Arial and which logo is Helvetica.
(In other words, I cheated.)
Posted by: yoav | January 21, 2013 1:47 AM
18/20 — Most were easy but I tripped up on a couple of subtle ones.
Posted by: rayval | January 21, 2013 2:10 AM
18/20 - TOYOTA and MATTEL. I love Helvetica, and not only because I am swiss…
Posted by: Thomas | January 21, 2013 4:15 AM
19/20 - 1 point gone with “Kawasaki”
Posted by: Pradeep | January 21, 2013 5:38 AM
18/20 - beaten by digital and Toyota
Posted by: Nathan | January 21, 2013 7:17 AM
I spotted everything, it’s easy when you know where to look. But some logos were harder and I wasn’t 100% sure about my choice.
Posted by: Luke | January 21, 2013 9:02 AM
20/20 ^_^
Posted by: Gurrupurru | January 21, 2013 10:05 AM
20/20!
Posted by: Anoop Surendran | January 21, 2013 10:52 AM
19/20 Panasonic
Posted by: Paul_CT | January 21, 2013 11:03 AM
Mattel and Toyota got me….Helvetica is usually my go-to font
Posted by: Julia | January 21, 2013 11:03 AM
19/20 Got American Airlines wrong, but that cemented my understanding of the differences.
Posted by: Anonymous | January 21, 2013 11:09 AM
19/20. Mattel was the one that got me!
Posted by: David Mearns | January 21, 2013 12:49 PM
I’m not certain about the non-O characters in TOYOTA, but Crate & Barrel definitely uses a non-Helvetica C.
Posted by: Michael Hall | January 21, 2013 2:49 PM
I got TOYOTA because the ‘O’s are slightly more round in Helvetica. Slightly more rectangular in Arial.
In most of the logos, Helvetica has the slightly bolder weight. But in Mattel, Arial was bolder. That threw me off.
Posted by: Tynach | January 21, 2013 4:58 PM
19/20 - Derrotado pela The North Face.
Posted by: MarcelloQ | January 21, 2013 8:58 PM
19/20 - Derrotado pela The North Face.
Posted by: MarcelloQ | January 21, 2013 8:59 PM
19/20, Mattel got me!
Posted by: Antonio Sponza | January 22, 2013 2:32 AM
Honestly: 18/20
Cheeting: 17/20
Posted by: rahul bhadauria | January 22, 2013 2:56 AM
Honestly: 18/20
Cheeting: 17/20
Posted by: rahul bhadauria | January 22, 2013 2:57 AM
19 out of 20. Mattel was hard. nice quiz!
Posted by: ginny | January 22, 2013 3:00 AM
Made it to 19 out of 20. My defeat was at TOYOTA. Damn those capitals ^^
Posted by: Mr.Mark | January 22, 2013 4:11 AM
19/20 - Curse you Mattel!
Posted by: Mr. Thöni | January 22, 2013 12:43 PM
I got 12 from 20. No formal background makes this a goo dish kind of score. I figured the difference and prefer the delicateness of Arial
Posted by: Ashok | January 22, 2013 12:47 PM
I scored 20/20. Whew! Mattel and Toyota nearly got me. Really fun quiz.
Posted by: Carl Peterson | January 22, 2013 1:54 PM
Mattel got me. Nice exercise!
Posted by: Kenji | January 22, 2013 2:06 PM
Good quiz, although the Mattel question is not entirely fair as it uses all non-differentiable glyphs - the weight was the only difference, so without comparing it to the actual logo I’d assert anyone has a 50/50 chance.
I’m only complaining because it accounts for my 19/20 score, of course.
Posted by: Peter Hanley | January 22, 2013 3:59 PM
20/20
Granted, Mattel and Staple almost got me. Toyota was noticeable because of the roundness of the ‘O’.
Great quiz!
Posted by: M. Tokuno | January 22, 2013 10:43 PM
Woop! 20/20 it’s easy when you know how ^_^
Posted by: Riana | January 23, 2013 9:01 AM
17/20 :)
Posted by: Gina Ramos | January 23, 2013 10:25 AM
Well as much as I hate Arial, thought this would be a breeze! 14/20 first try waking up from dead sleep and 2 sips of coffee, 18/20 after more coffee and some oxygen. Thx SC for the suggestion of movie “Helvetica”, I added to my Netflix! Since font is not so much a focus in my position (just layout and logo placement), I never really paid much attention. Now time to study!
Posted by: Tee Rich | January 23, 2013 12:10 PM
20/20. The capitals were a bit hard, but the thinkness of the “T” and roundness of the “O” made the choice quite evident. Fun test. :)
Posted by: Stijn Vogels | January 23, 2013 3:48 PM
Amazing! There were more tell tale signs than I thought, although a couple of them almost caught me out – quality always shines through in the end. Helvetica is a great font, but it’s Akzidenz Grotesk for me, for ever!
Posted by: Kevin | January 24, 2013 2:06 AM
18/20 - Mattel from hell! And National got me. I just got too confident and click-happy.
Great quiz to get my morning design juices flowing.
Thanks!
Posted by: GING | January 24, 2013 8:54 AM
9/20!! I’m sure you all are cheating again. this was a doozy I need to go lay down have a good day
Posted by: lanop | January 24, 2013 10:48 AM
18/20 beaten by The North Face and Toyota
Posted by: George | January 24, 2013 9:38 PM
20/20,i want to make friends with the ones who score 20!
Posted by: Oyane | January 24, 2013 10:58 PM
20/20,i want to make friends with the ones who score 20!
Posted by: Oyane | January 24, 2013 11:03 PM
HaHa got it. @)/20 Thanks Font Explorer Pro!
Fun way to study for the quiz coming up.
Posted by: Mathew Kerzman | January 26, 2013 12:41 AM
HaHa got it. @)/20 Thanks Font Explorer Pro!
Fun way to study for the quiz coming up.
Posted by: Mathew Kerzman | January 26, 2013 12:43 AM
18/20 missed mattel and digital. Pretty good for a non-visual reader!
Posted by: dawn | January 26, 2013 2:19 AM
Really great idea! And I was proud of myself for getting 18 correct. MATTEL got me as uppercase is definitely easier to pull off. But if I’m not mistaken, some of the original logos have had very slight changes made to certain characters to differentiate themselves as well over the years… not sure; maybe you know?
Posted by: Dana Whittle | January 27, 2013 9:42 AM
17/20 I too was defeted by MATTEL also TOYOTA and digital. I learned something. Pretty cool, thank you.
Posted by: MyDesignKingdom | January 30, 2013 9:00 AM
19/20 Mattel got me too
Posted by: Mike Powell | January 30, 2013 9:56 PM
Mattel got me. 19/20
Posted by: Sonja | February 1, 2013 10:50 AM
20/20 however Mattel and Toyota was hard. REAL HARD.
Posted by: Josh | February 2, 2013 6:03 PM
19/20. I guess MATTEL is the one that gets everybody, huh?
Posted by: TFHackett | February 5, 2013 2:01 PM
19/20 - defeated by Mattel. Should have looked more closely at the width of the “A”. Great quiz!
Posted by: Anthony | February 5, 2013 4:07 PM
I got 15 outa 20 on the quiz! Not bad considering I didn’t even know there was a difference!! But I do have a good eye!
Posted by: Patsea | February 6, 2013 11:56 AM
20 out of 20. Mattel and Toyota were tough! :)
Posted by: Praveen Kumar | February 8, 2013 11:25 AM
17/20 Nice game
Posted by: Francesca | February 10, 2013 9:56 AM
20/20! Toyota and Mattel were hard though as everyone has mentioned. It’s all about the vertical and horizontal tails. great quiz!
Posted by: Dan | February 11, 2013 6:36 AM
20/20! It’s all about the vertical and horizontals. Mattel and Toyota were hard though, as everyone else has also mentioned ;) nice one!
Posted by: DanStanFreeman | February 11, 2013 6:37 AM
18/20 Got distracted at Staples by the L, and mattel.
Posted by: JesusAcevedo | February 15, 2013 7:48 PM
19/20 here. Like many others, I fell victim to the oh-so-similar-looking uppercase characters in Mattel.
Excellent quiz and thoughtful use of relevant examples. Kudos!
Posted by: Len Fischer | February 17, 2013 8:02 PM
19/20. Mattel’s kerning gave it away for me, but Toyota got me. This actually made me appreciate Helvetica a lot more. It’s really not a difference the average person would probably notice, but the craftsmanship of the letterforms appeals to me.
Posted by: e | February 18, 2013 5:00 PM
17/20,, I was Bad.. Remember that Helvetica letters do not have slant corners.
Posted by: Erik Royall | February 21, 2013 8:27 PM
19/20. Mattel got me too. And I’ve been lucky with Toyota.
Posted by: Finneas | February 28, 2013 9:59 AM
MATTEL and TOYOTA defeated me. I guess I am not as familiar with the all caps.
Posted by: Faye Cousins | March 3, 2013 4:40 PM
12/20. The lack of the R to indicate a registered trademark made Staples, whose slogan is, “That was easy”, er, easy!
Toyota was also quite easy, as I remembered that the ‘O’ are nice and round, rather than oval.
Posted by: Mary Peterson | March 5, 2013 9:28 AM
19/20. Yep, Mattel did it.
Posted by: Ivan | March 5, 2013 12:57 PM
Mattel got me. :( That was a tough one!
Posted by: Sherry | March 5, 2013 1:02 PM
18-20. Mattel and Toyota got me.
Posted by: Brandon Weaver | March 5, 2013 7:51 PM
19/20 - but got Mattel and Toyota right. I clicked too soon on Staples…
Great quiz, thanks!
Posted by: Galia | March 6, 2013 4:10 AM
20 | 20 … but MATTEL is a little bit too small on this website to properly judge the “M” and “E”…
Posted by: Pato | March 8, 2013 11:24 AM
20/20 The terrible kerning on the fake versions of mattel,and staples gave away the fakes. In Toyota the Os are where you look. Helvetica’s Os are rounder.
Posted by: Haleigh knapp | March 13, 2013 9:14 AM
18/20 Toyota and Target got me~~~
Posted by: Hong | March 14, 2013 3:29 AM
18/20 …mattel got me…but, I should’ve seen toyota :D
Posted by: Tana | March 14, 2013 6:42 AM
8/20
I missed pretty much everything!!
Posted by: adub | March 29, 2013 10:36 AM
I belong to the TOYOTA faction. I still don’t see definite clues to which is which. So 19/20 is a good thing, isn’t it. Did anyone of get the strange feeling that some logos don’t look too bad in Arial?
Posted by: Henning Langen | March 29, 2013 10:49 AM
20/20. Confused with Mattel and Toyota, I think the only different is in “A” and “O”. I think capital “A” in Helvetica look better. :D
Posted by: Hamdi Rizal | March 29, 2013 12:43 PM
18/20!!!
It’s a very good exeercise!!
Posted by: Romina | March 29, 2013 4:25 PM
19/20 I had the hardest time with the all cap logos. Great execise!
Posted by: Marie | March 31, 2013 12:33 PM
18/20
All caps are the most difficult to tell (unless there are letters with curves like S and R). Otherwise, the easiest way to tell is that all letters in Helvetica terminate perfectly vertically or horizontally.
Posted by: K. Powell | March 31, 2013 11:25 PM
18/20
All caps are the most difficult to tell (unless there are letters with curves like S and R). Otherwise, the easiest way to tell is that all letters in Helvetica terminate perfectly vertically or horizontally.
Posted by: K. Powell | March 31, 2013 11:26 PM
20 out of 20!
Posted by: john spiegel | April 3, 2013 10:57 AM
20 out of 20!
Posted by: john spiegel | April 3, 2013 10:59 AM
19/20. all cap TOYOTA was my downfall.
Posted by: jeremy | April 3, 2013 12:38 PM
19/20. It was Agfa.
Posted by: Anass | April 4, 2013 6:28 PM
20/20 !!! Gotta watch out for them staples. Look at the tagline, not the logo.
Thank you it was fun.
Posted by: Chris Klein | April 18, 2013 11:12 PM
20/20!
Facile en plus!
Posted by: Dominique | May 15, 2013 11:18 AM
19/20. Bitten by Mattel, even having just watched Helvetica the movie!
Posted by: Caroline | June 3, 2013 6:35 PM
19/20. I was too fast clicking on TOYOTA. Damn.
Posted by: Daniel | June 5, 2013 10:48 AM
20/20 as a sign writer I wouldn’t expect anything less :)
Posted by: Tracey Jones | June 10, 2013 8:27 PM
easy 20/20.. i didnt think i’d make it. But this was easy, fun and informative.
Posted by: riverwilddd | October 7, 2013 4:39 AM
Very easy to recognize. Arial is just a cheap copy of Univers. very different to Helvetica in the counting details!
Posted by: Till Altmann | October 21, 2013 7:06 PM
P.S.
20/20
Posted by: Till Altmann | October 21, 2013 7:12 PM
16/20 - Agfa, Panasonic, Target, 3M
Not bad for someone who doesn’t know what to look for.
I mean, I only know those are fonts in my MS Word.
Posted by: Kindl | October 29, 2013 8:18 AM
DAMN YOU, MATTEL!
Posted by: nineteen outta twenty | October 29, 2013 12:23 PM
first time 16/20 and I only just looked at the differences on wiki for like a split second, second time 20/20.
While helvetica looks nice, it’s just pure pendantry to give a flying crap about a font. It’s practically identical to arial no matter what pendantic losers who care about something so trivial as a fonttype say.
If companies changed all helvitica fonts to arial it wouldn’t affect ANYONES life, in any way, shape, or form. And 99.99999999999999999999999% of the population wouldn’t even notice.
Posted by: Type is just not that important. | November 10, 2013 9:35 PM
20/20
Posted by: A.S | November 20, 2013 6:46 AM