IKEA's Font - Who Cares? 
It’s all about the furniture folks.
There’s been a lot in the news lately about IKEA’s change of font. For those who hadn’t noticed – in July IKEA changed their font (most noticably in the 2010 IKEA Catalog) to the free Microsoft font, Verdana. Time reported on it (and misrepresented IKEA Fans, I do believe!), NPR covered it and over 300 blogs from all over the world have posted about it.
Yesterday, a lively conversation ensued when the Church of the Customer blog’s Jackie Huba posted IKEA’s Font Fury. Blog reader and author of Gravit8.com Chris Bailey comments:
When I heard about the designer backlash, my first thought was: does the core Ikea buyer give two hoots about the font used in the catalog? Are they going to boycott the brand because a minority of designers think the font in a catalog is ugly?
My guess is no. IKEA Fans has 112,000+ members worldwide. This ‘controversy’ has been brewing for nearly a week, and not a single thread to date has been posted in the IKEA Fans forums, nor have there been outraged comments posted on our first post on the topic: IKEA’s Change to Verdana Prompts Online Outrage.
The ‘outrage’ is from designers, typographers and font fetishists. Not IKEA Fans. Yes, I get that the font is a huge design consideration, and that it impacts the overall brand. Yes, I get that Verdana is a typeface designed for the screen, not for print. But I also understand that IKEA has to consider the cost involved in licensing fonts across dozens of languages, and that IKEA Sans is not available as a font on a computer near you unless you happen to work at IKEA. IKEA’s brand wasn’t built on a typeface – it was built on modern design at affordable prices.
Do I think IKEA should have used Verdana on their website, and maintained the use of IKEA Sans, IKEA Serif and IKEA Script in print? Perhaps, but honestly…it’s all about the furniture, folks – not the fonts.
Do you care? Take our poll! (Look on the right column for the poll)
Poll ended. Thanks for playing!
Your response to the question, “IKEA’s Font – Who Cares?”
72% say ‘Get a Life’
28% say ‘I do!’
Tags: Church of the Customer, Gravit8, IKEA fonts, NPR, poll, Time Magazine, verdana
Obviously IKEA is stupidly and sadly destroying its image with attitudes like this. If IKEA doesn’t care about typeface desing, why may we believe IKEA will keep caring about the design and quality of their products? i think some boycott will appear from this, this lack of credibility, specially using a typeface like Verdana, popularized by a company like Microsoft, which also doensn’t care about the quality of anything. Typgraphy is not a mere cosmetic issue.
to their credit, ikea have managed to make verdana work for them. it doesn’t look as nice as futura, but it doesn’t look completely hideous. having said that, it seems the main motivation for the change has been to do with cost so i guess that reflects the ikea brand/philosophy pretty well!
put it this way, i can’t imagine a company like apple or even microsoft making such a change based on costs when i imagine they face the same advertising challenges
It’s a typeface and it’s readable and that’s all I really care about. I think the so-called message a typeface or font is supposed to reflect is very overrated.
I’m sorry, but this new font is nothing short of vile.
It’s amazing how a simple issue can cause so much of a ruckuss.
If anyone out there really believes that by changing a font in a catalogue that this is the first step in Ikea’s designs, concepts and products sprialling into a downward black hole, then I think they need to take a good hard look at what they’re saying because think about it kids, the people who write the catalogues are NOT the same people who design/build the furniture!
And I’m sorry, anyone who says they now won’t buy Ikea products because of the change in font is deluding themselves. Take a moment to explain that reasoning to someone and see what the response is. It’s like saying “I won’t eat at my favourite restaurant because the serviettes (napkins) are now a different texture even though the food itself is still fantastic”.
Still if you wish to boycott Ikea then go for it because in the end who do you do think you’d be impacting?
What a load of nonsensical nonsense over nothing!
Verdana is a nce, simple font. It may have been designed for the screen but it also works in print. I’m an actor and I find about 90% of the scripts I work with are printed in Verdana; it’s clear, and easy to read both close up and at a distance which is brilliant in the rehearsal room.
With Verdana in a catalogue you can see the descirptions and titles of the items from further away which might encourage you to look closer. It’s a good marketing hook.
But hey if you want to be a petty child about it feel free…
Uh, I think you might find that if you read the article we actually are supporting the ‘who could care less’ camp. We think the whole thing was blown way out of proportion. Ridiculous!
Hi. I work for IKEA and i recently had the chance to work with the group responsible for looking after the price tags in IKEA.
Their reasons were:
*the IKEA Sans typeface was expensive to use and for all sites to be licensed. IKEA is about doing alot with small means, and its not a very IKEA way of doing things, paying for something that can be obtained for free
*they had problems with spacing and text control in the new pricing system, what would fit on the screen, changes when it was printed, i.e a pricetag with $199 would print at $19 (missing the 9)
*they had problems with different languages using the same typeface, i.e. arabic and asian countries
*online they could not use it on their website in html, but it could be used in flash, so pages were not consistent
Thanks for that insight, john! It’s great to hear from inside IKEA since there wasn’t much said publicly to defend IKEA throughout all the hubbub. There’s so much more to consider than just the aesthetics that all the typophiles fail to consider when they cry that it hurts their eyes.
Though I agree its just a font. But of all the free (and readily available) fonts around, why Verdana? Why not Arial? Isn’t that font free as well? It may not be as sleek as Helvetica but hey, its simplicity and availability should have counted for something…
Verdana is just too boxy for me.