What’s wrong with Arial? I mean I know it is disliked by typography fans because it is a ripoff of the popular Helvetica. But like, moral concerns aside or whatever, as a slightly worse ripoff of a good and popular typeface, it is unsurprisingly fairly visually appealing…
It seems like a reasonable product decision given that most people don’t care about typeface history.
I find Arial slightly discomforting, because the kerning is not as nice as with Helvetica. Helvetica feels "denser".
But more to the point, for a corporate logo, Arial feels like a cheap knock off to the more polished Helvetica. You can see this yourself, by looking at corporate existing corporate logos designed in helvetica and then redesigned in Arial.
Admittedly this is personal preference in the end, but I feel like if HR is going to give someone bad news, they're going to do it in Arial. If Apple is going to release a life changing technology, they're going to do it in Helvetica.
I should have thought more about the experiment. I was trying to identify the helvetica ones, looking for example for logos that looked slightly unusual or janky.
I guess it would fit your point a little more if I just looked for whichever I thought was more aesthetically pleasing.
Anyway, I got about 50% (accidentally closed the window, I think it may have been 51%?) so at least if I was the customer, the company would not seem to gain any advantage from licensing the superior font.
It looks "fuller", "denser" to me. And leaves me with an impression of a "sturdy" company.
Finally, here's Neue Helvetica 75 and Arial Pro Bold pages from Linotype. I just open them up in a new tab each and switch tabs to get a better idea for things.
It seems like a reasonable product decision given that most people don’t care about typeface history.