Microsoft has a new default font, which means you do too
Microsoft has announced a change of typeface and, in a self-aggrandising open letter addressed to «every human on earth [sic] that’s ever typed text», says the default font of 15 years, Calibri, is to be replaced with the newly created font Aptos. The company says this is «the perfect font for higher resolution screens» and the choice was made following «impassioned feedback» from users on five new fonts it had commissioned.
The five fonts were named Bierstadt, Grandview, Seaford, Skeena, and Tenorite. Bierstadt was chosen but has been renamed Aptos. This is a total guess but I reckon the font was probably named after Albert Bierstadt, and re-named because in German it means «beer city». Aptos is taken from its creator Steve Matteson's favourite unincorporated town in California, with the word coming from the indigenous language Ohlone and meaning «the people».
As of today Aptos will appear as the default font across Word, Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel for the hundreds of millions of users of Microsoft office software across the world. Over the coming months it will become the default across all PCs running Microsoft software.
Microsoft's post announcing the new font does go into the realms of the slightly mad, and I say this as someone who's actually interested in fonts. It says Aptos «was crafted to embody the many aspects of the human experience» and was designed with «a slight humanist touch». This is a lot to say about what is essentially a pretty nice-looking sans serif.
«There’s always that little voice inside of me saying, 'You know, you gotta try to sneak in a little bit of humanity. You can’t just use rulers and straight edges and French curves to make all these shapes mechanical.'», said creator Matteson.
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