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Ikea Changes Typeface, Upsets Fans

by Evan Shamoon on August 31, 2009 at 09:55 AM



Ikea, the can-do-no-wrong Swedish purveyor of cheap designer furniture and meatballs, appears to have finally done something wrong. And it involves fonts.

In a decision to change its branding, the company has gone with a new typeface to represent itself, and the move is causing quite a stir on the (to be fair, easily stirred) Internet.

The new font is Microsoft's ubiquitous Verdana, which the software company actually created to be used on screens, and not paper. "It has open, wide letterforms with lots of space between characters to aid legibility at small sizes on screen," Simon l'Anson, creative director at a London digital-consulting company, told Time. "It doesn't exhibit any elegance or visual rhythm when set at large sizes. It's like taking the family sedan off-road. It will sort of work, but ultimately gets bogged down."



Ikea has, of course, enjoyed much of its success thanks to its excellent branding, which really boils down to design, whether in the form of its wares themselves, or in the forms of its catalogs, in-store labeling, and iconic blue-and-yellow warehouses. That being said, the move comes as quite a surprise to those who have come to respect the company for its generally sophisticated sensibilities. Most critics assume the move was made largely to standardize the company's logo across multiple countries. The commonplace Verdana font is available in most alphabets and, perhaps most importantly, is offered by Microsoft free of charge.

We must say, the idea of all those enormous signs being changed -- for the worse, no less -- does seem rather unfortunate. [From: Time]

Tags: business, design, fonts, ikea, marketing, microsoft, retail, top, verdana, word

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