The Verdana™ Family of fonts was created specifically
to address the challenges of on-screen display.
Designed by world renowned type designer Matthew Carter, and hand-hinted by leading hinting expert, Tom Rickner, these sans serif fonts are unique examples of type design for the computer screen. The generous width and spacing of Verdana's characters is key to the legibility of these fonts on the screen.
Despite the quality of the Verdana font family at small sizes it is at higher resolutions that the fonts are best appreciated. In the words of Tom Rickner, ‘My hope now is that these faces will be enjoyed beyond just the computer screen. Although the screen size bitmaps were the most crucial in the production of these fonts [their] uses should not be limited to on screen typography.
Bearing similarities to humanist sans-serif typefaces such as Frutiger, Verdana was designed to be readable at small sizes on the low-resolution computer screens of the period. Like many designs of this type, Verdana has a large x-height (tall lower-case characters), with wider proportions and loose letter-spacing than on print-orientated designs like Helvetica
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.