Verdana
DejaVu Sans |
Verdana is a
Bearing similarities to
Distinctive visual identifiable characteristics
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4b/Tahoma_vs._Verdana_font_comparison.png/310px-Tahoma_vs._Verdana_font_comparison.png)
Some characteristics of the typeface are as follows:
Letter | Characteristic |
---|---|
i | square dot |
j | serif protruding left |
a | double story |
Q | tail is centered |
J | serif protruding left |
I | two serifs on the top and bottom |
As an example of the approach of making similar characters easily distinguishable, the digit 1 (one) in Verdana was given a horizontal base and a hook in the upper left to distinguish it from lowercase l (L) and uppercase I (i). This is similar to the digit "1" found in Morris Fuller Benton's sans-serif typefaces News Gothic and Franklin Gothic.
Prevalence
Released in 1996, Verdana was bundled with subsequent versions of the
According to a 2013 survey, the availability of Verdana was 99.90% on Windows, 99.26% on Mac OS, and 70.02% on
According to a study of online fonts by the Software Usability and Research Laboratory at
Microsoft variants
Verdana Ref is a custom version of Verdana for use with Microsoft Reference. It is used in Microsoft Bookshelf 2000, Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 99, Encarta Virtual Globe 99, Office 2000 Premium, Publisher 2000. MS Reference Sans Serif is a derivative of Verdana Ref with bold and italic fonts. This font family is included with
Tahoma is similar to Verdana but with tighter letter spacing. The Windows Mobile core font Nina[14] is a more condensed version of Tahoma and Verdana.[15]
Verdana Pro
Microsoft licensed rights to Verdana to
Combining characters bug
In the past, Verdana (v. 2.43) had an incorrect position for
Awards
In 2006, the Verdana typeface was named in the list of British design icons in the Great British Design Quest organised by the BBC and the Design Museum. Carter's typeface appeared on a list which included Concorde, Mini, Jaguar E-Type, Aston Martin DB5, Supermarine Spitfire, World Wide Web, London tube map, AEC Routemaster bus and the K2 telephone box.[22]
Usage
In 2007, the font was used for the questions in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, replacing the ITC Conduit font.
In 2009,
Carter addressed this controversy during an interview in 2013:
Ever since there was that big ruckus about the IKEA catalog changing from Futura to Verdana, which I had nothing to do with and didn’t even know about, people ask me about that everywhere I go. I give a talk about something historical and then at the end someone will get up and say: "I started a petition to go back to Futura. You’re a villain!" You get blamed for something you had nothing to do with.
There's a strange misunderstanding. A friendly guy came up to me at a conference recently and said: I signed that petition to go back to Futura. So I asked: what caused you to do that? And he said, well, Verdana is a screen font. You mustn’t use it in print. So I said: OK, well, so you open the IKEA catalog, it’s set in Verdana, with the big prices and everything… how do you tell it’s a screen font? What is it about Verdana that says: this is a screen font? He had no idea. He just knew it because he’d been told. There are many people who make judgments without really understanding what the typographic issues are. Students are interesting—they’ll say things to me like: my professor told me I cannot use Verdana and Georgia in print because they’re screen fonts, but I tried it and it looks perfectly all right. And I can only say: Thank you! Go ahead![5]
In 2019, with its logo refresh, IKEA again changed their corporate typeface, from Verdana to a customized version of
Monotype also created a custom version for Opel, Opel Next.[28]
See also
Notes
- ISBN 9781568984278. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
- ^ a b Hill, Bill (9 December 2011). "Apple updates iBooks with new book fonts". Bill Hill 49 (blog). Retrieved 26 March 2016.
- ^ "Interview with Virginia Howlett, mother of Verdana". Dmxzone.com. 2004-06-24. Retrieved 2013-09-21.
- ^ Will-Harris, Daniel (2003). "Georgia & Verdana - Typefaces designed for the screen (finally)". Archived from the original on 28 August 2013. Retrieved 9 August 2013.
- ^ a b Middendorp, Jan; Carter, Matthew (October 2013). "Matthew Carter". Creative Characters. MyFonts by Monotype. Retrieved September 29, 2018.
- ISBN 9781568984278. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
- ^ "Apple.com - Mac OS X 10.4: Fonts list". Support.apple.com. 2011-11-06. Archived from the original on 2013-09-25. Retrieved 2013-09-21.
- ^ Mark Hachman (2002-08-14). "Microsoft Withdraws Free Web Fonts". ExtremeTech. Archived from the original on 2010-04-17. Retrieved 2010-04-13.
- ^ Microsoft (2002-07-25). "TrueType core fonts for the Web FAQ". Microsoft. Archived from the original on 2002-01-24. Retrieved 2010-04-13.
- ^ Microsoft (2001-12-28). "TrueType core fonts for the Web EULA". Microsoft. Archived from the original on 2009-12-08. Retrieved 2010-04-13.
- ^ Code Style: Most common fonts for Windows, Mac and Linux, full font survey results. Archived April 26, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ "A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which Size and Type is Best?". Archived from the original on 2015-04-14. Retrieved 2015-04-04.
- ^ Peters, Yyves. "Version 1.5 Improves Typography in iBooks on iPad and iPhone". FontFeed. Archived from the original on 16 March 2016. Retrieved 26 March 2016.
- ^ "E-books: an InfoDesign-Café discussion about their usability potentials and problems". 2008-02-24. Archived from the original on February 24, 2008. Retrieved 2013-09-21.
- ^ "When in doubt, use Verdana". Microsoft.com. Retrieved 2013-09-21.
- ^ "Introducing Georgia Pro and Verdana Pro". Font Bureau. Archived from the original on 11 November 2011. Retrieved 11 November 2011.
- ^ a b Coles, Stephen. "Verdana Pro". Font Bureau. Archived from the original on 14 September 2013. Retrieved 28 July 2015.
- ^ Zeldman, L. Jeffrey (2010-04-18). "Verdana Pro (and Con)". Zeldman.com. Retrieved 2013-09-21.
- Microsoft Store. Microsoft. 13 December 2017. Retrieved 1 December 2018.
- ^ "Underdots". Tenser.typepad.com. Retrieved 2013-09-21.
- ^ "European Union Expansion Font Update". Microsoft. Retrieved 2011-02-02.
- ^ "Long list unveiled for national vote on public's favourite example of Great British Design". BBC. 18 November 2016.
- ^ a b UnderConsideration. "Brand New: Verdanagate". Retrieved 2024-01-16.
- ^ "The Font War: Ikea Fans Fume over Switch to Verdana - TIME". 2009-08-29. Archived from the original on 2009-08-29. Retrieved 2024-01-16.
- ^ Crikey (2009-09-01). "The full fonty: why type nerds went mental over IKEA". Crikey. Retrieved 2024-01-16.
- ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-01-16.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2024-01-16.
- ^ "New Corporate Identity: Opel with New Image". media.opel.com. 30 November 2020. Retrieved 14 April 2021.
References
- "Interview with Matthew Carter, designer of Verdana and Georgia"
- "Interview with Virginia Howlett, mother of Verdana" Retrieved September 9, 2005
- Friedl, Friedrich, Nicolaus Ott and Bernard Stein. Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques through History. Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. ISBN 1-57912-023-7.
- Macmillan, Neil. An A–Z of Type Designers. Yale University Press: 2006. ISBN 0-300-11151-7.
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- Verdana font family (Microsoft typography)
- Verdana Pro font family (Microsoft typography)
- Verdana Ref font family (Microsoft typography)
- Downloadable version of Verdana (Core fonts for the Web)