What you didn’t know about Verdana

I wrote in my last post about how the original Franklin Gothic ‘family’ was three fonts in a trench coat.

It occurred to me that the same can be said about Verdana.

Verdana was created by Matthew Carter for Microsoft and released in 1996. It was designed to be readable at small text sizes on the low-resolution screens available at the time.

You can trace its lineage from typefaces like Akzidenz Grotesk, Frutiger, and Franklin Gothic.

If you’ve spent any time on the internet, you’ll have seen Verdana in action.

What you probably didn’t know about Verdana is that you can use Verdana, Tahoma, and Nina together as a de facto typeface family.

At this point you’re probably thinking, “okay, Tahoma I know – but what the hell is Nina?”.

Like Verdana and Tahoma (the latter released at the same time as Verdana), Nina was created by Mattew Carter. You can buy it online but, if you’re a Windows user, you can just download it for free from the Microsoft Store.

The description for Nina on the Microsoft Store does say, “The design isn't close enough to call it Verdana Condensed, but the two typefaces are very closely related.”

But you know what? I say go ahead and use Tahoma as the de facto Verdana Condensed and Nina as the de facto Verdana Compressed. Almost no one will notice and, frankly, I don’t think anyone will care!

You’re welcome :)