You Rang?

Oooh look at me! I’ve been lured out of my sabBATical cave by a font crisis. Yes, crisis.

A brief aside: First, yes, I can have an aside after only 3 sentences (more like 2 sentences but whatever). Second, my beloved laptop is ill, very ill. So dire is its health that I had to leave it with an IT dude. He is probably watching porn, playing video games, or chatting with his weirdo role-playing community RIGHT NOW on MY laptop. I on the other hand am stuck on an unfamiliar computer. It feels like wearing rented bowling shoes without socks. Necessary, but icky. For all the moments when proper equipment is necessary, a font rant is undoubtedly one of them. One must have their fonts handy, and one MUST have their previous rants handy because fontrific posts require a little digital maneuvering for uploading to Blogger. Blogger doesn’t provide enough fonts to meet my fonting needs, and if you don’t make your text the right size? Well, that really pisses Blogger off. And yet the special fontphone rang in my sabBATical cave. It was AnnieEm on the line. So duty calls and I must forge on.

If you haven’t heard, Ikea changed their font. That’s interesting. Seriously. Let’s take a look at the switch.


The switch is from Futura to Verdana. Ikea, like most corporations, tweaked standard Futura and Verdana but it’s essentially the same fonts as on your computer (YOUR computer not MY computer- my computer is either stuck in computer ICU or is being forced to display klingon porn). Why has Ikea done this? Again, let’s examine.


Cash is the answer. Verdana is cheap and Microsoft invented, it was designed to be read on a computer screen. Futura is elegant and makes your cheap chair feel a little spiffier. Damnit Ikea! Why? I am, or was, comfortably ensconced in my sabBATical cave. It’s not like you changed fonts to something cooler… I am not anti-font change but you went for something sterile and common. It would be like, crap, like what would that be like? Like if on a box of Frosted Flakes Tony said “They’re Great!” in motherfucking Times New Roman. Everyone knows tigers don’t talk that way (except highly educated snooty tigers and Tony don’t run like that). It would just be wrong. It doesn’t evoke the right sentiment. Chairs, frosted flakes, prescription drugs, strange hair doodads that make tumors appear in your “rocked” pony, it’s all the same. We WILL be bombarded with logos and packaging. At the very least I expect a little creative effort. Switching to Verdana is just sad. There is a petition to protest this change.