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Verdana is a
humanist sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...
typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...
designed by
Matthew Carter Matthew Carter (born 1 October 1937) is a British type designer.Christophe_Plantin.html" ;"title="y Christophe Plantin">y Christophe Plantin' in typography's golden age was in perfect condition (some muddle aside)
long with Long may refer to: Measurement * Long, characteristic of something of great duration * Long, characteristic of something of great length * Longitude (abbreviation: long.), a geographic coordinate * Longa (music), note value in early music mensu ...
Plantin's accoun ...
for
Microsoft Corporation Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washingt ...
, with hand-
hinting Font hinting (also known as instructing) is the use of mathematical instructions to adjust the display of an outline font so that it lines up with a rasterized grid. At low screen resolutions, hinting is critical for producing clear, legible tex ...
done by
Thomas Rickner Thomas Rickner (born October 8, 1966, Rochester, New York) is an American type designer who, while Lead Typographer at Apple Inc., supervised the production of the first TrueType fonts released in 1991 as part of Apple’s System 7 operating sys ...
, then at
Monotype Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The ...
. Demand for such a typeface was recognized by
Virginia Howlett Virginia Howlett (born 1951 in Edmonton, Alberta) is a designer and painter. With an MFA in Painting from The Art Institute of Chicago, Howlett was one of the first designers hired into Microsoft in 1985. After writing an email to Bill Gates expla ...
of Microsoft's
typography Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), an ...
group and commissioned by
Steve Ballmer Steven Anthony Ballmer (; March 24, 1956) is an American business magnate and investor who served as the chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball As ...
. The name "Verdana" is derived from " verdant" (green) and "Ana" (the name of Howlett's eldest daughter). Bearing similarities to
humanist Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry. The meaning of the term "human ...
sans-serif
typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...
s such as Frutiger, Verdana was designed to be readable at small sizes on the low-resolution
computer screen A computer monitor is an output device that displays information in pictorial or textual form. A discrete monitor comprises a visual display, support electronics, power supply, housing, electrical connectors, and external user controls. The di ...
s of the period. Like many designs of this type, Verdana has a large
x-height upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the le ...
(tall lower-case characters), with wider proportions and looser letter-spacing than on print-orientated designs like
Helvetica Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...
. The counters and apertures are wide, to keep strokes clearly separate from one another, and similarly shaped letters are designed to appear clearly different to increase legibility for body text. The bold weight is thicker than would be normal with fonts for print use, suiting the limitations of onscreen display. Carter has described spacing as an area he particularly worked on during the design process.


Distinctive visual identifiable characteristics

Characteristics of the typeface are: ;Lower case *there is a square dot over the letter i *the lowercase j has a serif on top that protrudes left *the a is double-story ;Upper case *the capital Qs tail is centered under the figure *the uppercase J has a serif on the top that protrudes left *the uppercase I has 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 Morris Fuller Benton (November 30, 1872 – June 30, 1948) was an American typeface designer who headed the design department of the American Type Founders (ATF), for which he was the chief type designer from 1900 to 1937. Many of Benton's ...
's sans-serif typefaces News Gothic and Franklin Gothic.


Prevalence

Released in 1996, Verdana was bundled with subsequent versions of the
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, as well as their
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and
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software on Windows,
classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. ...
, and
Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...
. Since at least Mac OS X 10.4 it is even bundled with Mac OS itself. In addition, up until 2002 it was available for download from Microsoft's web site as
freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the ...
(".exe" files for Microsoft Windows and in ".sit.hqx" archives for Mac OS) under a proprietary license imposing some restrictions on usage and distribution, allowing it to be used by end users in any system supporting installation of "exe" or ".sit.hqx" files and supporting
TrueType TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating ...
fonts. The downloadable files are still available legally from third-party web sites; see the
External links An internal link is a type of hyperlink on a web page to another page or resource, such as an image or document, on the same website or domain. Hyperlinks are considered either "external" or "internal" depending on their target or destination ...
section. However, these files include only old versions of Verdana, and updated versions are not available as a freeware. According to one long-running survey, the availability of Verdana is 99.70% on Windows, 98.05% on computers running Mac OS, and 67.91% on free operating systems like
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
. According to a study of online fonts by the Software Usability and Research Laboratory at
Wichita State University Wichita State University (WSU) is a public research university in Wichita, Kansas, United States. It is governed by the Kansas Board of Regents. The university offers more than 60 undergraduate degree programs in more than 200 areas of study in ...
, participants preferred Verdana to be the best overall font choice, and it was also perceived as being among the most legible fonts. However, Microsoft's font manager Bill Hill wrote that "with its large x-height and very generous spacing, it never felt comfortable as an eBook font". He noted that Microsoft had commissioned an alternative version of the pre-existing typefaces Berling and Frutiger for its Microsoft Reader
e-book An ebook (short for electronic book), also known as an e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in digital form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. A ...
product. Despite this, Verdana was initially used as one of the bundled book-reading fonts on the
iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, ...
before an update in 2011.


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
Microsoft Encarta ''Microsoft Encarta'' is a discontinued digital multimedia encyclopedia published by Microsoft from 1993 to 2009. Originally sold on CD-ROM or DVD, it was also available on the World Wide Web via an annual subscription, although later articles ...
. Tahoma is similar to Verdana but with tighter letter spacing. The
Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants. Its origin dated back to Windows CE in 1996, though Windows Mobile itself first appeared in 2000 as Pock ...
core font Nina is a more condensed version of Tahoma and Verdana.


Verdana Pro

Microsoft licensed rights to Verdana to Font Bureau for a new Verdana Pro release, published in 2011. Verdana Pro adds correct German closing quotation marks, light, semi-bold and black styles with italics, as well as condensed styles with italics across all weights. The expanded family was designed for organisations which had made extensive use of Verdana due to its availability but desired additional versions for greater flexibility. It is sold separately through print and web licenses, being sold by Font Bureau and Ascender, although the
Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...
users can acquire it free of charge from
Microsoft Store Microsoft Store (formerly known as Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform app ...
or by activating the Pan-European Supplemental Fonts optional resource on the Settings app. A similar Georgia Pro release was announced at the same time.


Combining characters bug

In the past, Verdana (v. 2.43) had an incorrect position for
combining diacritical mark In digital typography, combining characters are characters that are intended to modify other characters. The most common combining characters in the Latin script are the combining diacritical marks (including combining accents). Unicode al ...
s, causing them to display on the following character instead of the preceding. This made it unsuitable for
Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...
-encoded text such as
Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...
or
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
. This bug did not usually reveal itself with
Latin letters The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...
. This is because some font display engines substitute sequences of base character + combining character with a
precomposed character A precomposed character (alternatively composite character or decomposable character) is a Unicode entity that can also be defined as a sequence of one or more other characters. A precomposed character may typically represent a letter with a diacri ...
glyph A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
. This bug was subsequently fixed in the version issued with
Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...
. It is also fixed in Verdana version 5.01 font on
Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was release to manufacturing, released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Wind ...
by installing the European Union Expansion Font Update from Microsoft.


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 The Design Museum in Kensington, London exhibits product, industrial, graphic, fashion, and architectural design. In 2018, the museum won the European Museum of the Year Award. The museum operates as a registered charity, and all funds generate ...
. Carter's typeface appeared on a list which included
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,
Mini The Mini is a small, two-door, four-seat car, developed as ADO15, and produced by the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and its successors, from 1959 through 2000. Minus a brief hiatus, original Minis were built for four decades and sold during ...
,
Jaguar E-Type The Jaguar E-Type, or the Jaguar XK-E for the North American market, is a British sports car that was manufactured by Jaguar Cars Ltd between 1961 and 1974. Its combination of beauty, high performance, and competitive pricing established the m ...
,
Aston Martin DB5 The Aston Martin DB5 is a British grand tourer (GT) produced by Aston Martin and designed by Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera. Originally produced from 1963 to 1965, the DB5 was an evolution of the final series of DB4. Alth ...
,
Supermarine Spitfire The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during, and after World War II. Many variants of the Spitfire were built, from the Mk 1 to the Rolls-Royce Gri ...
,
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,
London tube map The Tube map (sometimes called the London Underground map) is a schematic transport map of the lines, stations and services of the London Underground, known colloquially as "the Tube", hence the map's name. The first schematic Tube map was de ...
,
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bus and the K2 telephone box.


Usage

In 2007, the font was used for the questions in ''
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'', replacing the ITC Conduit font. In 2009,
IKEA IKEA (; ) is a Dutch multinational conglomerate based in the Netherlands that designs and sells , kitchen appliances, decoration, home accessories, and various other goods and home services. Started in 1943 by Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA has been ...
changed the
typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...
used in its catalog from Futura to Verdana, expressing a desire to unify its branding between print and web media. The controversy has been attributed to the perception of Verdana as a symbol of homogeneity in popular typography."Verdanagate,"
by "Armin" in "Brand New" blog, August 31, 2009
''Time'' magazine and the
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. new ...
ran articles on the controversy including a brief interview with an IKEA representative, focusing on the opinions of typographers and designers. Design and advertising industry-focused publications such as ''
Business Week ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...
'' joined the fray of online posts. The branding critic blog Brand New was one of those using the Verdanagate name. The Australian online daily news site ''Crikey'' also published an article on the controversy. ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'' ran an article asking "Ikea is changing its font to Verdana—causing outrage among typomaniacs. Should the rest of us care? Absolutely." ''
The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' said the change to Verdana "is so offensive to many because it seems like a slap at the principles of design by a company that has been hailed for its adherence to them." 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!
In 2019, with its logo refresh, IKEA again changed their corporate typeface, from Verdana to a customized version of Noto Sans under the name ''Noto IKEA''. Monotype also created a custom version for Opel, Opel Next.


See also

*
Core fonts for the Web Core fonts for the Web was a project started by Microsoft in 1996 to create a standard pack of fonts for the World Wide Web. It included the proprietary fonts Andalé Mono, Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times Ne ...
*
Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...
* Segoe * Tahoma


Notes


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. . *Macmillan, Neil. ''An A–Z of Type Designers.'' Yale University Press: 2006. .


External links


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 Core fonts for the Web was a project started by Microsoft in 1996 to create a standard pack of fonts for the World Wide Web. It included the proprietary fonts Andalé Mono, Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times Ne ...
) {{Microsoft Windows Typefaces Monotype typefaces Microsoft typefaces Humanist sans-serif typefaces Typefaces and fonts introduced in 1996 Windows XP typefaces Typefaces designed by Matthew Carter