Comments on: The Verdana Monologues – When Ikea’s Designers go Kabookskik

By: Warren Tenney

Warren Tenney — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 15:02:40 +0000

I agree that Verdana looks really awful and was a poor choice on Ikea’s part, but I think that that’s their own deal and who’s to argue with that.

The question I have to ask is, is this what our web conventions have driven us to? What is the design world coming to when a company like Ikea is willing to drop their standards this far to accommodate utility.

Is there really NO WAY to make style work with the web?

Also, Chris, I think it’s pointless to pick at the CMYK example, when the rest of Ilaria’s cases made the point.

By: Administrator

Administrator — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:53:48 +0000

Well, Ilaria,
the only disagreement I have with your comment is that typography is also, today, a bit subjective. For example, the use of verdana on Ikea’s latest TV ads, actually looks really good, due to the text chosen. Futura is a lovely font, but it’s also a “lazy designer” font, which is over-used by just about every designer at some point. Also, citing the “@iA tweet” … Why CMYK? Only printers care about color … is not really comparable, since CMYK has nothing to do with what printers like or dislike or a “choice” in the matter as with design and typography, it’s a technical requirement to reproduce full color printing to have the 4-colors. C = cyan, M = magenta, Y = yellow, K = keyline/black. You must have CMYK (or more colors) to properly reproduce “full color” material, as found in magazines, brochures, etc.

– Christopher Simmons

By: Ilaria

Ilaria — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:18:41 +0000

it is probably true that within the graphic community, some of these designers protest because Verdana is a Microsoft font. But I do agree with those who say that this is a sad typographic choice. It’s all about that: it’s like choosing the wrong colour or the wrong paper. People always say about our job that, eventually, graphic design is a matter of personal taste. But we all know that it’s not like that. Good typography means culture: and culture seems to lack in this choice of Verdana for Ikea. That’s the important aspect of this issue. I quote the @iA tweet about that:
“Why edit? Only writers notice bad copy! Why CMYK? Only printers care about color! Why even think? Only philosophers analyze thoughts.”

By: nitrofurano

nitrofurano — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:47:04 +0000

replacing Futura with Verdana as anti-snob attitude from IKEA? for gods sake…

By: nitrofurano

nitrofurano — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:46:51 +0000

the choice for Verdana from IKEA is completelly disastrous – ‘in short passages’ we see that ‘I’ weird serifs (in an unserifed typeface?) and the bridge from ‘A’ completelly unbalanced – IKEA, please get rid of Verdana, for gods sake…

By: contextfree

contextfree — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:29:28 +0000

In WPF 4.0 (currently in beta) the font rendering stack has been rebuilt to allow more GDI-like appearance at small sizes.

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:36:45 +0000

You are correct.

This is nothing more than the usual designer snobbishness (see: interviews in the documentary “Helvetica” — some of the snobbishness on display just make you want to go over and slap these famous designers). Plus, it brings in the whole Mac vs. PC thing that’s been going on for twenty years. I mean, people are still angry at Microsoft for choosing Arial over Helvetica (funny, they somehow didn’t give Microsoft credit for choosing Times New Roman over Times Roman).

I personally don’t like reading extended text in Verdana. But short passages look OK. And isn’t that exactly what Ikea does in its catalogs?

P.S. The reason that Georgia doesn’t look as nice in Windows is that GDI/GDI+ tend to slam things down to the pixel grid when executing the hinting program, in order to improve legibility at small font sizes. Mac OS X tends not to do that. The new Windows graphics API, WPF, also doesn’t do that (which is actually bad for small font sizes — I wish Microsoft had had the guts to stick with the original design choice instead of giving in to the design community).

By: john

john — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 23:17:41 +0000

lolol