Who doesn’t like a good debate?  Since I work with many designers but am not a designer myself, I really appreciated the comments on both sides of the debate.  At issue; IKEA’s switch to a font that provided them better international brand consistency.

Some comment highlights from idsgn.org “After 50 years of the iconic Futura typeface, IKEA has made a switch to… Verdana?” via IKEA says goodbye to Futura: idsgn (a design blog).

doug Aug 26 2009 3:43 PM

What horrible timing to adopt a web-font in their branding. With typekit and similar and css3 support for better typography on the web coming soon, it seems silly to finally move to verdana. 10 years ago it may have made sense, but today they could just bide their time a little longer and get the typographic quality of real fonts on the web…

Sarah Aug 27 2009 4:43 AM

Okay, I just got the catalogue and I noticed a lot of differences… I’d say that the design is more reserved and conservative (less spreads of decked out apartments / shagadelic bedrooms / etc) but come on people, there is an AIDS epidemic in Africa, children are starving, and people are killing whales for crying out loud.

Ciacci Aug 27 2009 4:59 PM

Designers are way too opinionated.

I hate working with them.

My favorite:

Brian – Aug 26 2009 1:26 PM

Ikea should have kept Futura, altered it to match their needs, and called Furnitura.

DailyFinance and other news stories are putting more attention on this story:

While Ikea’s signature font, a customized version of Futura, was attractive and distinctive, it didn’t work in every language, and was unwieldy for many uses. Consequently, the company recently decided to switch to Verdana, a typeface that Microsoft distributes for free. The new font works across the globe, and translates into an endless array of alphabets. Unfortunately, it also infuriates many of Ikea’s customers. – DailyFinance

And now a petition has been started allowing the undersigned to declare, “We, the undersigned designers, consider this to be a mutilation of Ikea’s long admired design philosophy. It is sad this is happening, and it undermines Ikea’s design leadership. Please bring Ikea Sans/Serif back, or get a proper typeface instead of Verdana! “ http://www.petitiononline.com/IKEAVERD/petition.html

I’ll get the new IKEA catalogue soon, but, sadly, there will be one reason less to enjoy browsing it. As they say, it will be just business—nothing personal. – iancul

Visit Iancu Barbarasa’s blog for all the details – Ikea Post

Do you have passion for your font?