My favorite font is Verdana, because it’s aggressively readable.

Some of its notable traits:

• Distinct digit 1, capital I, and lowercase l.
• Tall x-height: lowercase letters are relatively tall.
• Wide letters overall.
• Open apertures.

To elaborate, apertures are the openings to partially enclosed spaces. For comparison, here’s Helvetica:

Helvetica is beautiful too: for example, its c and s have perfectly flat terminals, which look clean and neutral. But that’s also why Helvetica is unreadable at small sizes.

Meanwhile, Verdana has perfectly vertical terminals, making c and o, for example, super distinct. The gaps are nearly as wide as possible—why waste the space on the page?

That’s Verdana’s personality: it’s so functional! And I love it.

Which brings me to IKEA.

IKEA

If there’s one IKEA product that embodies Verdana, it’s the Lack side table.

It’s the first table you put in an empty room, and the one you flip over for the lols.

Yeah, the one filled with cardboard. The one you impulse-bought while leaving the store because it was so cheap.

And you love it anyway, because it still looks beautiful and gets the job done, and that’s what matters.

And yet, when IKEA adopted Verdana in 2009, nerds howled.

Change

IKEA’s font before Verdana was Futura.

Futura is beautiful too: it’s geometric and striking. It suits movie titles, whereas Verdana can look silly at large sizes.

So I understand the aversion: “you abandoned a classic, in favor of a web font, commissioned by Microsoft, designed for low-resolution screens‽”

But Verdana brought its own opinionated personality, which stood for values that many IKEA products share. Oddly, it fit.

Well, now it’s my turn to weep, because in 2019, IKEA abandoned Verdana for Noto Sans.

Now

Comparison by David Isaksson

Noto Sans was commissioned by Google, and based on Droid Sans, Android’s old default font.

Some traits I dislike:

• Misaligned terminals. Why do c and s start angled but end vertical? Make up your mind.
• Unnecessary wedges atop n and r. Distracting.
• Cut-off crossbar on f. It matches t, but it’s unnecessary there too.

But you know what? Noto Sans brings its own values: it aims to cover as many languages as possible, and it’s open.

If there’s one IKEA product that embodies Noto Sans, it’s Blåhaj, the plush shark (even though that’s from 2014).

Yes, the meme. With a subreddit. Which IKEA later cast as a realtor in a series of promo videos—with subtitles in Noto Sans.

By choosing Noto Sans, IKEA is choosing multiculturalism. They’re embracing the Internet and the playful phenomena it enables.

And hey, Noto Sans actually does look more playful than Verdana. Oddly, it fits.

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Bonus links:

• IKEA’s last catalog in Futura (2009)
• IKEA’s last catalog in Verdana (2019)
• IKEA’s first catalog in Noto Sans (2020)