Ikea Causes An Uproar

Right, I'll start with the controversial bit: Ikea has bid farewell to it's iconic Futura typeface, which it has been using for over 50 years, and has replaced it with Verdana. Yes, that's right, Verdana. Here's a quick before and after for you:

Before and after from Please Copy Me

However, before we get in to why Ikea have seemingly lost the plot, typographically at least, let's take a look back in time at an old Ikea catalogue, and how Ikea has developed as a brand. Ikea have actually been around for over 60 years, and first introduced their iconic catalogue back in 1951, although the oldest examples I can find are of this catalogue from 1965:

1965 Ikea catalogue (from ikke tikke theo)

The catalogue clearly hasn't changed much over the years; if you compare this 1965 example to the 2009 catalogue, they still retain a similar style and layout, with large, full page images of rooms, or close-ups of products on a white background, accompanied by the bold geometric letterforms of Futura.

Spreads from the 2009 catalogue

Futura has been consistently used for years (image from mgonamission's flickr set)

Ikea has been using Futura, in one form or another, for over 50 years, and the two have become almost synonymous. Some years ago, Ikea actually commissioned it's own corporate typeface, "Ikea Sans", which is a unique version of Futura, with more weights and a few slightly altered characters. They also commissioned an "Ikea Serif", which was based on Century Schoolbook, and the two have been used together in Ikea catalogues ever since, and have helped to make Ikea one of the most recognisable brands in the world. However, the 2010 catalogue uses Verdana throughout:






So why have Ikea unexpectedly made the decision to break off their ties with Futura and replace it with the rather odd choice of Verdana? Well, they say it's all about keeping the typeface consistent, whether the catalogue is for England, Russia, Asia, or online. They want to use the same font in every country, and with recent expansion into a number of Asian countries, this has not been possible with Futura. The other advantage of Verdana is that it is highly legible on-screen, and Ikea say that with their catalogue now being online as well as in print, Verdana was better suited to the job. There's no denying that Verdana is a good font for use on the web; it's one of the core web fonts, so is cross-browser compatible and very legible at small sizes, it was in fact developed for Microsoft by Matthew Carter specifically for use on screen. However, it was never intended for use in print, and at large sizes it looks rather clumsy and unbalanced.



Verdana has wide letterforms to make it easier to read as body copy on a monitor screen, but when used as a display face it loses all elegance; the terminals begin to look odd, and the kerning goes completely wrong. It's true that Futura/Ikea-Sans doesn't support characters for non-western alphabets, but surely there would have been a better choice than Verdana to unify catalogues around the globe? Many designers are suggesting even that it would have been wiser to commission a fully extended version of Ikea Sans with additional characters to support other alphabets.

A foreign Ikea catalogue from 2009, not set in Futura like the Western editions

The 2010 catalogue, set in Verdana

When the new catalogue was unveiled last week, it caused an uproar amongst the design community, with many bloggers criticising the move, and so many people mentioning it on Twitter that it made its way into Twitter's list of top trending topics. There is even an online petition to bring Futura back, which at the time of writing had 3,519 signatures. On the Typophile site alone there are hundreds of comments that have been made criticising the move to Verdana:

"Verdana is wrong on so many levels. It's less readable, prone to more clotting on the press or looking clotted, and forget about elegance. Myriad, Avneir, even Lucida or Vera would look much better"

SuperUltraFabulous

"I just couldn’t imagine a serious catalog design employing a screen text face for printed display work. I really think that this is a nasty case of a business being cheap"

James Puckett

"This is a disastrous move by a company that's supposed to be design-led! The use of Verdana has the unfortunate effect of making any design look as if it's been quickly knocked out on a home computer with no thought or effort, just because it's (usually) the default typeface on any Windows machine"

Richard Welsh

"Rubbish. It’s a screen font, not graceful at display size, and lacking in subtlety"

Nick Shinn

"To me, Verdana just screams “default.” I love it at small sizes on screen (and maybe even in print), but if it’s any larger or used in other applications it just makes me think of terrible PowerPoint presentations"

DrDoc

It seems to me a great shame that such an iconic brand, which has remained consistent for decades has suddenly decided to get rid of one of the elements which made it so distinctive, and clearly lots of other designers feel the same way. However, it is yet to be seen whether people outside the design community will bat an eyelid. To the ordinary Ikea customer who doesn't care about the difference between a font and a typeface, and has never even heard of leading or kerning, it probably just looks like a load of letters.

(If anyone is interested, there's a similar article about Audi who had a typographic change recently, moving from Univers to a Verdana-esque face).