Verdana was drawn from the pixel up. Matthew Carter designed it in 1996 for Microsoft and Tom Rickner hand-hinted every size, so it renders cleanly on the lit screen rather than the printed page — wide spacing, a tall x-height, and letterforms that keep I, l and 1 unmistakably apart. This system honors that origin. The ground is not paper but a dark screen field carrying cool grey, anti-aliased text, with the era's Microsoft blue reserved for links and actions. Everything reads as an on-screen interface: panels, list rows, and small, genuinely legible body copy.