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Comment by reidmain | Hacker News Reader

That is almost the exact experience I had. I got 17/20 and the ones I screwed up all had capital letters.

I couldn't see any difference between Mattel and Toyota.

The perfectly round "O" was the giveaway for me. Helvetica just feels more "literal" to me, if that makes any sense, with its perfectly horizontal endings on "C" and "S" and "t", so the round "O" seemed more likely. Mattel nearly tripped me up too, but I noticed that Helvetica was bolder throughout than the Arial equivalent, so it wasn't hard.

O isn't perfectly round in Helvetica. The Toyota logo is modified to use perfect circles for the Os. The real O is a bit rounder than in Arial maybe, but still not a circle. Futura is the one with the perfect circles (for both O and o).

Toyota was the only one I got wrong: it was the round Os that threw me off. I thought Helvetica didn't look like that, and, well, it doesn't.

I used the same rational. Whichever font looked bolder, I choose and got it correct. Also, the Staples Arial version didn't have the "registered" mark so I got that one easily.

But in the Mattel example, Helvetica is the thinner font. Instead notice the varying letter width, the M being wider than the A with Helvetica in the Mattel example.

I think your description of "literalness" relates well to "geometric" typefaces (typefaces constructed on simple geometric shapes).

Fun test!

Mattel was also the one that tripped me up.

As the GP said, the caps on the S, C, T, etc were usually the giveaways.

The flourish at the bottom right (not sure the correct term) of the R in TARGET gave me at moment's pause. But each of the logos was customized to an extent.

I realised it must be Helvetica because of the "R". I reasoned thus: I am more familiar with Arial than Helvetica, and I'm sure I would have seen that "R" before if I were spending a lot of time with it because it's just so ugly, so since I didn't recognise it, it must be Helvetica. And I was right.

It's funny, because I universally prefer Helvetica over Arial otherwise.

Mattel is the genuinely incredibly close, the 'Y' in Toyota is the obvious tell if you've spent a while looking at Helvetica though.

I answered 18 out of 20 questions correctly. American Apparel and Toyota tripped me.

The first difference I picked up on was lowercase r's.

Lowercase Helvetica characters never end on an angle. They are always flat and either parallel on the bottom or the edge of the screen.

Toyota was a pure guess for me.

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