Typomaniacs

Those with strongly-held views on typography.

Reporting for The Guardian on the news that Ikea has changed its font fromFutura to Verdana, Simon Garfield revealed:

Online design forums are fuming, and typomaniacs are saying terrible things.

Accounting for the typomaniacs’ ire, Garfield said:

Futura has a quirkiness to it that Verdana does not, as well as a much longer history linked to a political art movement. Futura, dating from the 1920s, is loosely Constructivist (only loosely, because the proprietary version that Ikea made its own – Ikea Sans – is slightly tweaked to distinguish it from, say, something Joseph Stalin might have used). Verdana, however, is linked to something modern and frequently reviled: Microsoft. It is one of the most widely used fonts in the world, and people who care about these things dislike the way our words are becoming homogenised: the way a sign over a bank looks the same as one over a cinema; the way magazines that once looked original now look like something designed for reading online. This is what has happened with Ikea: the new look has been defined not by a company proudly parading its 66-year heritage, but by something driven by the clarity of the digital age.