Well-written. I learned a lot!
Would have been interesting to also see a note about Verdana, and know if Microsoft shifting away from Arial as the default sans serif has changed its popularity as much as one might think.
Would have been interesting to also see a note about Verdana, and know if Microsoft shifting away from Arial as the default sans serif has changed its popularity as much as one might think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapf_Dingbats
https://web.archive.org/web/20220705073411/https://www.inver...
Zapf Dingbats’ little pointing hands are less mere bullets than distilled manicules: their sleek, tapering wrists and attenuated index fingers fuse medieval marginalia’s flourishes with mid-century modernism’s rigor, transforming a humble signpost into a compact, almost fetishized arrow of attention.
They're sleek and minimal enough to function as crisply hard modern bullets, yet they retain a soft, calligraphic, Victorian flourish (the very essence of the medieval manicule, digitized by Hermann Zapf in 1978), making them perfectly at home in a vintage Beagle Bros Apple ][ Software Catalog.
http://asimov.applefritter.com/documentation/advertisements/...
https://beagle.applearchives.com/
How would you like to buy a new pair of hands?
Personally, I loved it. I think it really encapsulated the idea of it’s so bad that it’s good and really suited the “assembled at home“ vibe.
Same problem that Georgia has: Otherwise a very serviceable Matthew Carter design.
2) It's a screen font.
In print and display applications, it really does look gross.
Source: A Friendly neighbourhood typographer
Source: someone who picked up a bit of knowledge about typography, but never used it professionally
With the pixel density of typical displays these days being as high as they are (phones are often 300-400+ PPI), I think this distinction isn't what it used to be.
It hasn’t been a default in tools for decades, so it suggests either the organization hasn’t been able to afford to refresh the design for 25 years or the designer is incompetent.
Hate is a strong word, but Verdana is almost certainly the wrong font for your business branding in 2025.
Contrary to your claim, approximately nobody with a professionally designed corporate identity used Verdana in a printed context like IKEA did. It was a "wrong" choice like Google was the "wrong" name for a search engine. It's a perfectly serviceable font, like Times New Roman. And that font was good enough for The Times of London, for goodness sakes.
Exactly my point. Verdana gives unprofessional vibes because a pro wouldn’t use it.
In a Midwest town you’ll see a few sun faded signs, printed menus, and service vehicles emblazoned with Verdana. In every case, my assumption is that “the owner made our logo in PowerPoint in 1999 and won’t let anyone change it” or “the technician at the vehicle decal shop pick a font for us”. IKEA having used the font for a season isn’t enough to override the sense of neglect.
If you’re designing print media for business, or a logo of all things, avoid Verdana.
Exactly my point. The name "Google" gives unprofessional vibes because a brand identity pro would never approve that name. And because of those unprofessional vibes, nobody ever took Google seriously.
In reality, font choice is a very surface level analysis. Ever since quality fonts became commoditised, it stopped being a significant signal of professionalism. A top designer could put Comic Sans next to Trajan and make it look like a million bucks; a bad designer could typeset in Gotham and still look like a high school student project.
"Unprofessional font" is a dead meme.
But it looks like they have changed or customised their typeface recently, the digits and letters like "y" do not look like standard Verdana any more.
"free Linux which rips off really good UNIXes"
"free IDE which rips off really good IntelliJ"
"free music production app which rips off really good Logic Pro"
Second: the objection isn't necessarily just that Verdana is free, it's that it's not a very good-looking font. Certainly in most people's opinion, it's nothing like as cool as Futura. IKEA, a massive multi-national company and an iconic brand, can and should do better. They say they did this to "align print and web", presumably meaning they wanted to use a font that was guaranteed to work in all browsers, but that's such a shame for print, really sacrificing great typography on the altar of browser support.
Third: font design is an art and a craft just like graphic design, photography, furniture design, script-writing, music production, whatever. There are certainly people who think literally everything should be free (as in "every Hollywood release should be Creative Commons"), but that's a rather extreme position. If you think it's a good thing that IKEA pays graphic designers to design their catalog, and furniture designers to design their furniture, you should think it's a good thing that IKEA pays typographers for their typeface design.
There are certainly issues with licensing in the world of typeface design (the emerging Monotype monopoly is really disturbing, for instance), but expecting giant companies to pay for good typography instead of using bad free typography is not some "anti-free software" stance.
But perpetual licensing for a font, why?
Verdana/Futura, what about familiarity? Verdana is certainly more familiar to more people than Futura, and we know from psychology that familiarity has an impact in everything we do.
What if IKEA switched to Verdana because studies show that it's "better" for sales? Surely paying for Futura is a rounding error in their balance sheet.
In much the same way, I'd argue that the Verdana typeface was a bolder and significantly more distinctive choice compared to something safe and well-trodden like Futura. Despite Verdana's widespread use on the web, approximately nobody had ever dared to use it in the way IKEA did, making it utterly distinctive.
Personally I think IKEA's shift to Noto was disappointing. At their scale they could have easily paid a type designer to make an IKEA Sans, inspired by Verdana, perhaps taking some cues from the likes of Raleway or Suisse Screen.
Heck, even Sweden did it.[0]
[0] https://sharingsweden.se/the-sweden-brand/brand-visual-ident...
https://x.com/ItsBadvertising/status/1085972315094044672
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nicolenguyen/slack-new-...
I'll never be able to unsee it. At least it doesn't spin.