August 30th, 2009 Font Change or Self-Sabotage?

How much attention do you pay to the fonts you use everyday? If you’re like most people, you probably have a few favorites, but don’t worry about it too much. Now how about this…how much attention do you pay to the fonts that other people use?

There is a little bit of an uproar on the internet recently over stylish-but-affordable furniture retailer Ikea switching the fonts they use in their advertising. For a long time, Ikea had used a customized version of Futura in most of their advertising. If you’ve ever seen an Ikea catalog or ad, maybe you can picture the big, bold prices accompanied by a brief description. All of their advertising had a consistent look which helped bolster their overall brand image. In addition, the use of a custom version of a classic font showed that Ikea really did pay attention to design.

So why the brouhaha over a simple font change? The problem, for most people, is that they switched to Verdana. Verdana is a font that many people are familiar with (even if they don’t realize it) because it is a free font distributed by Microsoft. It’s probably found on just about every computer in the universe. I’ll bet you they even have Verdana on the International Space Station. Except there it’s SPACE Verdana…that’s pretty sweet.

The font itself, isn’t terrible. It’s just sort of boring. It was designed very specifically for use on computer screens. Loose letterspacing and tall lower-case letters give Verdana an overall looser look. This is so that it’s easier to read on screen—letters don’t plug up or run too close together. And for that purpose, Verdana performs perfectly. It is a very good utilitarian design.

But to take this on-screen font and use it for print work shows, in many designers’ minds, a lack of respect for design. Complaints about the font range from finding the cheapest option available (free) to the easiest solution due to it being readily available around the world. Neither of these show the same sort of concern for design that Ikea shows with every single one of it’s nearly 10,000 items. Each silverware tray has a fun name, unique design—in short, each product fits in with the Ikea brand image. Using Verdana does not fit into the Ikea ethos.

Personally, I’m not freaking out about the font. I’ve seen print pages with the new font and while I don’t love it, it doesn’t ruin it for me. To be totally honest, I think that a lot of the uproar is because it’s a font created and distributed by Microsoft. Microsoft and the design community don’t generally play well together. It’s not the Mac-vs-PC thing, though, so much as it is that Microsoft tends to devalue professional design. By putting out products like MS Publisher with 15 zillion templates, they tell people that everybody can be their own designer.

The moral of this story is this: um…I don’t know. I have to admit that it would be pretty sweet, though, if 989 Design ever got so big that people got pissed off about the font I used on my site. I think I’ll make that one of my goals. Become huge, cause font uproar.