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!