The Verdana typeface family was designed specifically to address the challenges of on-screen display. Verdana was originally designed by world-renowned type designer Matthew Carter, and tuned for screen display by the leading TrueType hinting expert, Tom Rickner. The Verdana fonts are unique examples of type designed specifically for the computer screen.

The Verdana fonts are stripped of features which are redundant when applied to the screen. Verdana exhibits characteristics derived from the pixel rather than the pen, the brush or the chisel. The balance between straight, curve and diagonal were meticulously tuned to ensure that the pixel patterns at small sizes are pleasing, clear and legible. Commonly confused characters, such as the lowercase i j l, the uppercase I J L and the number 1, have been carefully drawn for maximum individuality – an important characteristic of fonts designed for on-screen use. And the various weights have been designed to create sufficient contrast from one another ensuring, for example, that the bold font is heavy enough even at small sizes. Another reason for the legibility of the Verdana fonts on the screen is their generous width and spacing.

The Verdana family received a major update in 2010 as a collaboration between The Font Bureau, Monotype Imaging and Matthew Carter. The original Verdana family included four fonts: regular, italic, bold and bold italic. The new and expanded Verdana Pro family contains 20 fonts in total. The Verdana Pro and Verdana Pro Condensed families each contain 10 fonts: Light, Regular, Semibold, Bold and Black (each with matching italic styles).

Verdana Pro includes a variety of advanced typographic features including true small capitals, ligatures, fractions, old style figures, lining tabular figures and lining proportional figures. An OpenType-savvy application is required to access these typographic features.