The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Georgia vs Helvetica
A screen-era serif against the archetypal Swiss sans. Georgia was drawn by Matthew Carter for Microsoft in 1993 to stay legible on low-resolution monitors, while Helvetica is Max Miedinger's 1957 neo-grotesque, built at the Haas foundry to be as neutral and unornamented as a typeface can be.
Georgia is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Gelasio, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Georgia → Helvetica is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Inter, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Helvetica →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- Georgia is a transitional serif rooted in 19th-century Scotch Roman designs, with a large x-height, reduced stroke contrast and thickened serifs so it holds up at small sizes on screen.
- Helvetica is a tightly spaced neo-grotesque sans with horizontal and vertical stroke terminals, a tall x-height and uniformly wide capitals that give text a dense, solid texture.
- Georgia ships with text (old-style) figures that sit on the baseline, whereas Helvetica uses lining figures and an oblique rather than a true italic.
- Georgia is bundled free with Windows and macOS, while Helvetica is a Monotype-owned commercial family: Windows ships the clone Arial instead, so using real Helvetica on the web means paying for a license.
- Georgia's expanded Georgia Pro family is also sold commercially, but the core four styles are already on almost every desktop machine.
Georgia
Reach for Georgia when you need a warm, readable serif for long-form body text on screen and want it to work with zero licensing cost.
Helvetica
Reach for Helvetica for neutral, high-impact corporate branding, signage and headlines, where its uniform, tight grotesque texture is the recognised standard and the Monotype license fee is justified.