Any font geeks care to comment? I’m considering moving some subtitles to using Noto Sans Medium. At least on the Latin/Greek/Cyrillic side of things, two things that have always bugged me about Arial are that it’s a little on the thin side (but Bold is too bold, and the demibold variants I’ve found don’t have all the needed characters), and the damned square periods and dots on the I’s and J’s. But thicker letters and rounded dots may run up against some sort of more serious kerning issue, which is something I’ve always been pretty satisfied with on the Arial side. I’m also fine with the “even blander than Helvetica if that’s even possible” criticism of Arial, and Noto Sans is similar. I favor utilitarian subtitles that don’t draw attention to themselves in any way at all.

I may even use Noto Sans as a “one font to rule them all” option, but that’s unlikely at this point. I’d have to validate every script looks as good or better before switching. On the downside, Noto Sans isn’t available at medium weight in all scripts, and its normal weight is even thinner than Arial.