Tag Verdana

The ugly truth at Ikea

ikea-futura
ikea-verdana

As evidenced on my visit to Croydon today; Ikea have started to migrate from the beautiful Futura (top) to the downright nasty Verdana (below) for their corporate communications.

This is a shame, for me one of the small (only?) joys in shopping in Ikea has been the elegant signage* and consistent typography that seemed to neatly sum up a paired down Swedish aesthetic.

Not for much longer.

Verdana is an ugly font. It was specifically designed by Microsoft for use on computer displays. It’s wide proportions, loose letter-spacing and large counters may aid legibility on screen, but it looks dreadful in print and signage.

Oh well. Let’s hope they don’t change Billy bookcases.

*They do also use a kind of brush-script font for “special offers” – also horrible.