Re:Ikea Catalog's Move to the Verdana Font Angers Fans of Fu...
by tptacek on Sunday September 06, 2009 @03:53PM
(#808092)
Ikea didn't anger fans of Futura. It angered fans of typography.
Reasonable people could debate whether Futura looked dated and idiosyncratic. But almost nobody seems to have a defense for Verdana, which is a typeface that makes a number of concesssions for legibility at small sizes on a computer screen.
Worth reading though is Brand New blog's "Verdanagate" post:
Brand New certainly seems to think this is overblown. Gruber at Daring Fireball suggests that this is an elaborate ruse to get Ikea lots of attention and publicity from designers.
Re:Ikea Catalog's Move to the Verdana Font Angers Fans of Fu...
by bprater on Sunday September 06, 2009 @03:58PM
(#808093)
Agreed, this debate may sound silly to some, but for those of us that are passionate about typography, making this sort of change is akin to the movie studio going in and recutting Pulp Fiction to "make it better" or having the staff at the Louvre adding a little something to the Mona List to "make it better".
Re:Ikea Catalog's Move to the Verdana Font Angers Fans of Fu...
by anigbrowl on Sunday September 06, 2009 @04:34PM
(#808131)
It's true that a film titled with Trajan shouldn't be retitled with Action Jackson (stereotypically 'classic' and 'hip, funny' fonts). And after perusing the 2010 catalog, I agree it looks considerably uglier in type terms, and that this is a mistake for a firm whose brand is partially built around the democratization of good design.
Then again, perhaps the lowering of aesthetic expectations will help to reduce the mild disappointment that accompanies appreciation of (most) Ikea products as ersatz and disposable substitutes for a level of aesthetic and manufacturing quality most of us can only aspire to. Verdana, then, may be regarded as a more truthful form of typographical communication, and signals a shift away from a petty-bourgeois dialectical proposition towards a more proletarian [You may purchase the rest of this article for $59.95]
Re:Ikea Catalog's Move to the Verdana Font Angers Fans of Fu...
by endtime on Sunday September 06, 2009 @08:27PM
(#808355)
Isn't it more like an annual Seattle screening of Pulp Fiction switching to, I dunno, Die Hard? Perhaps a change for the worse, but one you are rarely (if ever) actually affected by, and one the majority of people who are affected by it wouldn't care about?
Movies are a tough example because a LOT more people care about movies than fonts -- so perhaps many people would care about that switch -- but you get the idea.
Re:Ikea Catalog's Move to the Verdana Font Angers Fans of Fu...
by dagw on Monday September 07, 2009 @03:03AM
(#808738)
No this is more like the movie studios making a new, not quite as cool, movie poster for Pulp Fiction for the re-release of the unchanged movie. The IKEA catalog is not their product, its their advertising. It's not like their catalog has any effect of the product (their furniture), much like a movie poster has no actual effect of the quality of the movie.
Re:Ikea Catalog's Move to the Verdana Font Angers Fans of Fu...
by furyg3 on Monday September 07, 2009 @06:22AM
(#808923)
I'm not a typography geek (or even a designer), but I'm fascinated with how passionate people can be about typefaces. The documentary mentioned in the article, Helvetica, blew my mind, mostly because of the passion/conflict/opinion that people have about something I take wholly for granted.
Re:Ikea Catalog's Move to the Verdana Font Angers Fans of Fu...
by ComputerGuru on Sunday September 06, 2009 @06:49PM
(#808246)
Honestly, both those fonts are terrible. Granted, nothing can match Verdana's sheer blandness and genericness; but Futura is a very.... lame font for a catalog - far too childish and silly. IMO, it was a good idea to change it, but definitely not to stick Verdana in its place.
Re:Ikea Catalog's Move to the Verdana Font Angers Fans of Fu...
by akd on Sunday September 06, 2009 @11:36PM
(#808529)
You have already started your inevitable downmodding, but I think you have a lot of truth to your comment. When people assail the change from Futura to Verdana, most give only their personal aesthetic preference for Verdana -- a pure assertion of its superiority.
Reasonable people could debate whether Futura looked dated and idiosyncratic. But almost nobody seems to have a defense for Verdana, which is a typeface that makes a number of concesssions for legibility at small sizes on a computer screen.
Worth reading though is Brand New blog's "Verdanagate" post:
http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/verdanag...
Brand New certainly seems to think this is overblown. Gruber at Daring Fireball suggests that this is an elaborate ruse to get Ikea lots of attention and publicity from designers.
Then again, perhaps the lowering of aesthetic expectations will help to reduce the mild disappointment that accompanies appreciation of (most) Ikea products as ersatz and disposable substitutes for a level of aesthetic and manufacturing quality most of us can only aspire to. Verdana, then, may be regarded as a more truthful form of typographical communication, and signals a shift away from a petty-bourgeois dialectical proposition towards a more proletarian [You may purchase the rest of this article for $59.95]
Movies are a tough example because a LOT more people care about movies than fonts -- so perhaps many people would care about that switch -- but you get the idea.
Page 1 - http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/0...
Page 2 - http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/0...
However, their bottom-line reason for making the change is very interesting and compelling: Cross-branding and language independence.
This appears to be the classic sacrifice of aesthetics for functionality.
Like Ikea furniture.
http://www.helveticafilm.com/
Warning: watching this movie may have self-image ramifications such as "Wow, did I just watch a documentary about a font?" :)
Not quite sure how the latter follows from the former...