3 ms·

You can pay a font designer a fixed fee to create a font, just like you pay a programmer a fixed fee to work on Linux. Could be even $1 mil / font. But perpetu

You can pay a font designer a fixed fee to create a font, just like you pay a programmer a fixed fee to work on Linux. Could be even $1 mil / font. But perpetual licensing for a font, why? Verdana/Futura, what about familiarity? Verdana is certainly more familiar to more people than Futura, and we know from psychology that familiarity has an impact in everything we do. What if IKEA switched to Verdana because studies show that it's "better" for sales? Surely paying for Futura is a rounding error in their balance sheet.

simondotau 1y ago
Sometimes, something that seems like an "obviously terrible decision" to subject matter experts turns out to be inconsequential, or perhaps even good. Ask a corporate identity expert in 1998 if you should name your big important company "Google" and they'd vomit in your face. Of course it looks very different in hindsight. In much the same way, I'd argue that the Verdana typeface was a bolder and significantly more distinctive choice compared to something safe and well-trodden like Futura. Despite Verdana's widespread use on the web, approximately nobody had ever dared to use it in the way IKEA did, making it utterly distinctive. Personally I think IKEA's shift to Noto was disappointing. At their scale they could have easily paid a type designer to make an IKEA Sans, inspired by Verdana, perhaps taking some cues from the likes of Raleway or Suisse Screen. Heck, even Sweden did it.[0] [0] https://sharingsweden.se/the-sweden-brand/brand-visual-identity/typography https://sharingsweden.se/the-sweden-brand/brand-visual-ident...
- robin_reala 1y ago
  Sweden Sans only has characters used in Swedish; IKEA is global and needs glyphs for most latin languages, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Korean and Chinese (traditional and simplified).

3 ms·

You can pay a font designer a fixed fee to create a font, just like you pay a programmer a fixed fee to work on Linux. Could be even $1 mil / font. But perpetu

by dist-epoch 1y ago

simondotau 1y ago
Sometimes, something that seems like an "obviously terrible decision" to subject matter experts turns out to be inconsequential, or perhaps even good. Ask a corporate identity expert in 1998 if you should name your big important company "Google" and they'd vomit in your face. Of course it looks very different in hindsight. In much the same way, I'd argue that the Verdana typeface was a bolder and significantly more distinctive choice compared to something safe and well-trodden like Futura. Despite Verdana's widespread use on the web, approximately nobody had ever dared to use it in the way IKEA did, making it utterly distinctive. Personally I think IKEA's shift to Noto was disappointing. At their scale they could have easily paid a type designer to make an IKEA Sans, inspired by Verdana, perhaps taking some cues from the likes of Raleway or Suisse Screen. Heck, even Sweden did it.[0] [0] https://sharingsweden.se/the-sweden-brand/brand-visual-identity/typography https://sharingsweden.se/the-sweden-brand/brand-visual-ident...
- robin_reala 1y ago
  Sweden Sans only has characters used in Swedish; IKEA is global and needs glyphs for most latin languages, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Korean and Chinese (traditional and simplified).