Typography of the Web: Arial Black, Gadget, and Impact

Dealing with the fatties today: Arial Black, Gadget, and Impact. These fonts are much heavier in weight and very often will not change appearance when you apply a text style, such as bold or italic, to them. They can give your headings a lot of extra punch and give your whole site more character, but they should be used sparingly and NEVER in a large chunk of content unless you want all of your viewers/readers to leave forever.

Arial Black

Arial Black, found on both Mac and Windows operating systems, is my personal font of choice when I want a nice, chubby chunk of typography on one of my headings. Unlike plain old Arial, which I do not expect to ever ever ever ever ever ever ever use in any of my print design, Arial Black is not a half bad font. The balance and shape issues in the lightweight version are minimalized by the gravity of the typeface. Now if only we could get Super Bold Akzidenz Grotesk bundled with all major operating systems…

I should mention that Gadget, a font that used to be bundled with Mac operating systems, used to be considered a web safe font as an alternative to Arial Black. This font is no longer bundled with ANYTHING. It is hard to come by these days and you should avoid it.

Impact

If Arial Black doesn’t interest you or fit nicely in your design, Impact is a solid alternative heading font. It too is now found on both major operating systems, so its fair game. I personally think it is a pretty horrid typeface, but that is not to say it does not have its place. Featuring a monumental x-height, stubby ascenders and descenders, ridiculously heavy vertical strokes, and condensed spacing, it is sure to make some kind of impact on your site. Be wary that this font, like Arial Black, will not respond to bold or italic styling.

I’ll be rounding out the sans-serif family next time with the Lucida twins, you won’t want to miss it.

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