Areal, a Refresh of Arial For Are.na, and For You

The typeface you see today across Are.na is Areal, our “revival” of Arial, entirely redrawn, rebuilt, and customized from the ground up just for them. Now, exactly a year after the project launched, we’re releasing it into the wild. As of today, ABC Areal is publicly available, for free, for everybody.

Unlike the older analog typefaces that usually get the revival treatment, Arial has always been a digital typeface, born in the computer age. So there are no pre-digital artefacts, no antique books, record covers or posters to base a revival on. It was commissioned by IBM in 1982 and designed by Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders at Monotype.

A story goes that IBM wanted something Helvetica-shaped for their new laser printer, since Helvetica belonged to Linotype and was already being used by Xerox on theirs. In 1992, Arial was included on the Windows 3.1 operating system, making it a default font on millions of first personal computers. Then in 1996, Arial 2.82 was picked by Microsoft as one of the “core fonts of the web”, becoming one of the only typefaces early web designers had to work with.

And it was this web version of Arial that we decided to use as the starting place.

Rebuilding Arial meant treating 30 year old software like a full blown archeological site. And digital files are fragile! They take damage, vanish, and are very hard to recover. To find that specific version of Arial, we had to work with computer technology archivists to get access to some of the first personal computers and operating systems still capable of running it. With their help, we found a way to screenshot Arial in its initial internet-era form. Screenshots of exactly the version that was present when the doors of the internet opened to the general public became our virtual blueprint: we digitally traced the sample characters we now had access to in the most faithful way, and that became the basis for Areal.

As every typeface is a record of the technology of its moment, the environment it was made in, and the working conditions behind it, Areal is its own snapshot of 2026. So you can see this as just another snapshot in a much longer timeline. Call me Romantic, fine.

Areal, of course, isn’t to be confused with Arial, though the goal is that you hardly notice the difference. Looking at Arial and Areal should feel like refreshing a browser page, or waking up on new years day. It’s the same, but it isn’t.

Areal is especially tailored to Are.na and to how we all use websites today. The typeface keeps Arial’s familiar silhouette but rebuilds the outlines throughout: stem thicknesses have been streamlined, missing characters filled in, and the overall design consistency has been improved across weights. We added ligatures the original never included, and a small set of Are.na-specific characters (the stars!). And not to forget, Areal goes beyond Arial’s own design space by breaching into Mono and Semi Mono territory. All of this is packaged as a very-able Variable Font, for light weight file size and full control over all parameters.

Darkmode optimization was another thing we took seriously. As Are.na is consumed online via desktop or mobile browsers, improving the typeface to device-reality felt like a given. The variable font version of Areal carries a darkmode axis that kicks in automatically depending on whether Are.na is enjoyed in light or dark mode. In simple words, it corrects the performance of white text on black background, meaning it makes everything easier to read for the human eye.

But I see that you want to hear more!

You know, the curious thing is: when light shapes are set on a dark background, the letterforms bloom and read heavier than they measure. They look unintentionally blurry, and nobody likes that! So this axis corrects that effect and trims that surplus weight without changing the width of the characters — therefore keeping every word in place.

For this project to come into existence, a whole bunch of stars really had to align. It’s serious, silly, necessary, unnecessary, all at the same time. We feel blessed to be able to carve out time for collaborations like this one from time to time.

The response to this project was overwhelming, and many people asked for access to Areal early on, wanting to use it in their own projects. And we love the idea of Areal’s journey continuing in the hands of the community.

When thinking about how to publish it, publishing it as a free font, free to download and free for everybody to use, felt like the only right way, given the history and soul of the project. So that’s what we decided to do.