Back to the Futura

7th Dec 2009 A passion and truth by Mark

Photo by kvanhorn

Despite the ever-evolving range of media channels, typography has historically always been at the heart of great design. However, web design has, until very recently, always lagged behind.

Traditionally a web designer hasn’t been able to pick the font they feel best fits the brand or the tone of their design without resorting to presenting it as an image or embedding it in a Flash movie. Both practices are frowned upon, primarily for SEO and accessibility reasons, with the copy being inaccessible to search engines and screen readers alike.

Fonts are therefore chosen, not for their aesthetic appeal, but for the likelihood that they will be available on most computer systems by default. The small list of web-safe fonts includes such exciting typefaces as Arial, Times New Roman and the perennial favourite Comic Sans.

This situation causes an obvious problem for a company with a well-established brand identity, because it can never be accurately expressed online. IKEA recently ditched their 50-year association with the font Futura in favour of the web-safe Verdana for all their communications, from websites to catalogues and packaging. The reason given by IKEA is that they wanted a consistency between their online activities and printed materials. The design community reacted with a storm of criticism, even causing the topic to trend on Twitter at one point. The decision is certainly a strange one; the Verdana font is ubiquitous online (it was originally developed by Microsoft specifically to be read on-screen and is bundled in with Windows) but was never intended for print work & looks frankly ludicrous when used as a headline font on a catalogue or, even worse, on a 48 sheet.

Ditching Futura only serves to dilute IKEA’s brand & weaken the company’s long-standing association with great design. However, it’s the timing of IKEA’s decision that is the most puzzling. The typographic world is finally opening up to the web designer, with web browsers (Internet Explorer aside) now supporting the ability to simply link to a font of the designer’s choosing. This means that a simple piece of code will massively expand the limited pool of web-safe fonts. However, there’s a problem. In theory, linking to fonts sounds great, but in reality it’s a legal minefield with many fonts copyrighted and their usage restricted.

The solution to this thorny problem is the newly launched Typekit. Typekit is a technology platform that hosts free and commercially available fonts, giving type designers the protection they require for their handiwork and allowing web designers legal access to a rapidly increasing range of high-quality fonts. It also eases the process by smoothing out how different browsers handle fonts allowing them to be embedded with a simple line of code. For web design this is quite simply revolutionary.

The service has been live for less than a month, but already its influence is being felt online. The New York Times is the latest company to make use of Typekit, allowing it to continue its rich typographic tradition online. The printed paper is renowned in the design world for its use of the Cheltenham and Franklin typefaces, and with the launch of a new online service called Times Skimmer, the digital version can finally follow suit. The site provides a quick alternative means to access content from NYTimes.com featuring just headlines and introductions, but with all the typefaces optimized and served via Typekit.

Closer to home, we knew when putting together this website that Typekit would allow us to make use of a richer typographic palette. Our selection as it transpired was a variation of the aforementioned Futura. It was an easy choice to make. It’s a font that’s over seventy years old but continues to look quirky & fresh; qualities that have led to its association with a host of global brands, most memorably Volkswagen, where it played a vital part in their classic ads throughout the sixties. Its obsessive fans are numerous, notably Stanley Kubrick and fellow film director Wes Anderson, and it was even chosen for a plaque left behind by Apollo 11 astronauts on the Moon. Finally, the high quality well-established fonts of the print world are open to the web designer without a Comic Sans in sight.

IKEA’s loss, is our gain, all thanks to Typekit.

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