What's your typography saying about you?

Typography: the study of type, typefaces, and the design that is shaped by it, is something many of us just take for granted. We write our blogs, websites, in a certain font and focus on injecting fancy graphics and colors to ensure it is communicates the correct feeling and message (wording aside of course!).

Recently however, I read Ross Johnson's 25+ sites that use typography as the only design element: "These designers have found a way to create beautiful and stunning visuals with out complex graphics, shading, color changes, backgrounds, etc… they let the type speak and the results are amazing."

Following shortly on the heels of this discovery, I found out that our favorite Swedish furniture giant, Ikea, has decided to change their font! Since the dawn of the company, they have been using a customized version of Futura - but no more. Coming soon to a household mailbox near you is a "more functional" typeface: Verdana. And in the process of this typographical change, it has provoked an instantaneous global backlash. 

The 2009 online Ikea catalogue with the old typeface.

Lisa Abend outlines this global backlash in her very entertaining article recently published in Time Magazine. Thanks largely to Twitter, the news went global instantaneously but has been picked up by blogs and forums alike.

The new typeface seen in the 2010 online Ikea catalogue 

Why all the fuss? It all comes down to esthetics: Ikea has always been respected for their ability to identify the beauty of design and inject into products accessible to us all. Some feel that in using this run of the mill font, they have turned their backs on the design world.

There's even a petition you can sign, if you, as the petition instigator writes "consider this to be a mutilation of Ikea's long admired design philosophy. It is sad this is happening, and it undermines Ikea's design leadership."

Wow! The power of typography!

Photos: top three c/o 3.7Designs and bottom two via Time Magazine.