Ikea Has Outraged “Fontheads”
Many retail companies envy the almost cult-like passion that Ikea’s customers direct toward the Swedish manufacturer of designer home goods. But the company wasn’t prepared for the worldwide backlash it experienced recently when it switched typefaces in its venerated catalog for the first time in 50 years, from Futura to Verdana.
For those type neophytes who don’t know their Helvetica from their Times Roman, Futura has been one of the grand masters of sans serif typefaces since it was first released in the 1920s. It’s prized for its clean geometry and simple elegance. Plus, it boasts an extensive family of associated fonts: Futura Light, Book, Medium, Heavy, Bold, Extra Bold, Condensed, Oblique, Light Oblique—and on and on.
On the other hand, Verdana was developed as a font to be used online. It is a modern, open typeface with extra space between letters making for maximum legibility on a computer screen. And therein lies the outrage. How could Ikea use a web font (designed by Microsoft, for goodness sake!) in its print materials? One disgruntled typophile declared on Twitter, “Words can’t describe my disgust.” In Romania, a petition was initiated to compel Ikea to switch back to Futura.
A company spokesperson disagreed stating, “Verdana is a simple, cost-effective font which works well in all media and languages.” But Ikea will have to continue to deal with customers who also happen to be graphic designers, and as such are impassioned and outspoken fontheads who actually sweat the details about typefaces, letter spacing and kerning!
P.S. I agree with Ikea that Verdana can be used in print. I, and others in my ad agency have used Verdana in print for some time. Just don’t spread it around to our advertising and design peers!
Hile Design is a full-service advertising agency based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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Lindsey wrote on August 31st, 2009 at 3:31 pm :
Glad you revised your postscript. Personally I disagree with Ikea’s decision; Futura is a beautiful font and much more interesting for display. I’m shuddering to think of their giant banners in Verdana now. Sadness. Verdana’s not necessarily a bad font for print, but I think it’s better used on-screen.
You’d think they would have gone with some Swiss Typography…
Dave Hile wrote on August 31st, 2009 at 5:03 pm :
I should clarify that I am not recommending Verdana for use in headers and display fonts in print, but it holds up well at small sizes (like 9 pt) as a text font.
Monica Getz wrote on September 2nd, 2009 at 9:41 am :
After reading a preview of Dave’s post, a Hile staffer (who shall remain nameless) made the innocent comment, “Don’t people have better things to worry about than fonts?” The rest of the Hile crew within earshot promptly launched into an impassioned, albeit brief, discussion about the very topic. In the previous version of Dave’s post, he mentioned that “we” agreed with Ikea. Lindsey, our resident fontophile, promptly took issue: Well, Dave, we don’t necessarily agree with you, you know. After all, Verdana is a web font.
Julie: Yeah, Dave. I’m not crazy about it, either.
Dave (startled at this lack of cohesiveness among the Hile team): Well, I didn’t say I’m in favor of Verdana being used any place Futura is used …
Art: I went into Ikea and they had a sign with words on it in Verdana as big as you … It was ugly!
Me (I admit somewhat self-righteously, trying to show how I, as the office writer, am above the trivialities of font discussions): What’s really important is what’s written in the font, not the font itself.
Art: I can show you a dozen examples of when that’s not true.
Alright, already. So, I guess we at Hile are a little opinionated about font usage. Sheesh! Granted, there are more important things in the world than Ikea’s choice to use Verdana (they’re paying the bill, after all), but we all have our hot buttons, and at least in this design-oriented office, typography tends to be one of them. Oh, and Dave? I like the way Verdana looks on our marketing letters, which is as close as I tend to get to it!