The family is continually being extended to support multilingual needs. The Verdana typeface family was first made available on July 8, 1996. In on-screen typography, it's important to keep the characters distinct from one another, and research has shown that wider letterspacing significantly aids reading from the screen. The limited number of pixels available at low resolutions means that tightly set characters can easily clash turning an r n into an m, or creating distracting black patches in a word.

The generous width and spacing of Verdana's characters is key to the legibility of these fonts on the screen. And the various weights in the typeface family have been designed to create sufficient contrast from one another ensuring, for example, that the bold font is heavy enough even at sizes as small as 8 ppem. Commonly confused characters, such as the lowercase i j l, the uppercase I J L and the numeral 1 have been carefully drawn for maximum distinctiveness - an important characteristic of fonts designed for on-screen use. The relationship between straight, curved and diagonal strokes has been painstakingly developed to ensure that the pixel patterns at small sizes are pleasing, clear and legible. The Verdana fonts exhibit characteristics derived from the pixel rather than the pen, the brush or the chisel. But to label Verdana a humanist face is to ignore the fact that this family isn't merely a revival of classical elegance this is type designed for the medium of screen. The Verdana family resembles humanist sans serifs such as Frutiger, and Edward Johnston's typeface for the London Underground, and Carter himself claims to see the influence of his own Bell Centennial in the face. Designed by world renowned type designer Matthew Carter, and hand-hinted by leading hinting expert, Agfa Monotype's Tom Rickner, these sans serif fonts are unique examples of type design for the computer screen. The Verdana typeface family consists of four TrueType fonts created specifically to address the challenges of on-screen display.

Verdana font family free