Random Acts of Thursday - Serif's up, dude!

You would think, being a nerd and all, that I'd be an all-purpose nerd. However, turns out I'm quite the nerd snob. Role-playing games? You sir, are a complete and utter geek of the furry-toothed variety. Same goes for the ren-fair guys in tights and pointy shoes. This doesn't go for ren-fair babes, because the rennaissance was apparently cleavage-enhanced. In fact, anything you do on the lines of nerdy will be judged and judged harshly if your nerdliness isn't the same as my nerdliness. You will be placed firmly on the 'get a life' short bus with no hope of parole, unless you're a cleavage-enhanced ren-fair babe.

That said, as much as I like to read, and as much as I respect the art of the graphic artists who develop and refine fonts and nerdily enjoy when the books I read have a blurb about the font they used and who created it, some people really need to get a life.

There was an article on Time Magazine's web page last week about how Ikea fans and graphic designers AROUND THE WORLD are up in arms about the retail mogul's decision to standardize their font.

Apparently at Ikea's inception, they modified a standard font set, Futura, just enough to make it uniquely theirs, something that whispered 'Ikea' into the collective ears of the world, and have been using it in all official Ikea-font capacities for 60 years. Now, in order to standardize publishing worldwide, they've gone to (collective gasp here) VERDANA. The horror! A corporation standardizing in order to save money in these economically-troubling times?

(I should note here that I am an economics nerd. Big time. I should note here, also, that Verdana is also my choice of fonts when I write these little tomes for you, oh faithful reader. Please don't think any less of me for choosing to dumb down my font choice to something so mundane. Perhaps you might like my blog more if I were to publish using this?)

But really. In this day and age, as much call as there is for graphic art and unique marketing tools, is it really earth-shattering that Ikea chose to use a standard font to maybe, just maybe, save us all fifty cents on a Bjork table lamp? Do we need entire web forums dedicated to this madness? Apparently so.

To which I say, 'Get a life!'

Nerds.