This was a terrific, reasonable take on this “controversy”. I have to admit that the correspondence set in Calibri looks like something dispatched from a leasing office. Imagine reading the Warren Commission report set in that. The author seems to settle on the consensus that surrounded TNR before this exchange made the news. It’s banal. At times it signals to its original objectives (e.g., Prof. Dr. style websites [1]). But still banal more often than not.
I love Univers. But I don’t think there’s anyone in public office with enough influence and swagger to ever enforce it. At the same time I have a bad feeling about the attention that decisions like this draw and what it may lead to. The article does a great job at portraying the general incompetence in both parties.
I can imagine Beto O’Rourke somewhere dreaming about styling all government communiqués like a page out of Ray Gun. Planning his come back. To set anything issued from Ted Cruz’s office in Zapf Dingbats. War.
The Warren Commission report was set in Century Schoolbook, the Supreme Court's typeface of choice. The appendices are photo reproductions of originals produced on typewriters, so they are in something monospaced.
You can see for yourself. They certainly would not have used Times New Roman.
But I suppose interoffice memoranda are meant to be skimmed, not read, so TNR or Calibri are both fine.
I didn’t mean to suggest that they would’ve. I just named a government document with significant gravity behind it to affect a point similar to the author’s:
> There’s nothing inherently wrong with this style, but one would hardly want an official document or legal contract to appear “warm and soft.”
Consider the response I gave to the other child comment on this thread referring to a different document as a revision if that suits you. [1]
I’m sorry. I don’t know of nor do I have the wherewithal to find any correspondence from the State Department to bolster my argument that “humanist fonts” are not always suited to the tenor of all government correspondence. Oddly, none of the press releases on state.gov are available in PDF as far as I can tell.
Wait.
At least imagine this!
> The State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose. These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states—in each case targeting American speakers and American companies. As such, I have determined that their entry, presence, or activities in the United States have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.
It’s already in “Open Sans”, which looks thinner and may have a taller X-height. What do you think of it? Not quite “warm”; certainly “soft”, I think. Should I feel concerned about this news? Or just alright?
Anodyne. That’s the way the words start to look after some time when set like this. How far away is that feeling from “banal”?
Q, more than any other glyph, is the letter that never fails to look weird in every typeface when I spend too much time looking at it/re-re-re-re-designing it.
> correspondence set in Calibri looks like something dispatched from a leasing office
In general this is the way I feel about anything written in a Microsoft-, Apple-, or Ubuntu-supplied typeface. If you stick to system fonts you the pinnacle of embodiment of apathy in my book.
Have some backbone, browse through Google fonts, pick something that represents your organization and stick with it.
Even if you are a leasing office, pick a good font. That will make me more likely to lease from you because your attention to typography conveys to me that you will also be attentive to details in building maintainence. If you communicate in Times New Roman and Arial it tells me that you probably are apathetic about mold in the walls and electrical code as well.
I'm sorry, you can't argue the font choice signals banality in the same article in which you argue that readers aren't sophisticated enough on font choice to catch that serifs are supposed to signal professionalism.
Why not? One quality is inherent, the other inherited. The typeface was developed with banality in mind and presumably become popular because of its utility in this respect. The ensuing popularity in word processors and on the Web likely lead to the idea that it’s more professional than others.
Again, the author:
> Indeed, the stronger explanation for Times New Roman’s long reign isn’t aesthetic excellence, but practicality and inertia.
"The typeface was developed with banality in mind..."
That's completely wrong. Times New Roman was designed for legibility at small sizes, in narrow columns, on absorbent newsprint, printed at high speed. That is, it was designed explicitly for a very specific purpose, which it fills admirably.
None of that should be taken as any kind of comment on the current brouhaha.
I hate for us to have to make it clear that any claim in favor of the typeface’s suitability should not be interpreted as direct support for those responsible for re-instituting it. This isn’t an admonishment, but a lament I hope you may share.
While TNR wasn’t designed to evoke banality in its less desirable connotations I do think the way that you’re describing it match sensibilities that the word “banal” can also carry; Ordinary, commonplace. I admit—it’s a stretch I’m taking. But how far from banal is the utilitarian?
Because font choice outside of large strokes like fantasy fonts is meaningless.
All of this exposition only works if people are literate in typography enough to get it. Most people can't even understand literalist art, say nothing about the symbolism of typography.
It's like how the Victorians invented a whole meaning categorization to different species of flowers and then acted like it was universal law. It's a secret in-crowd code. It has no inherent meaning.
How you can conceive a literate society that is not affected by type. The fact that general literacy is apparently declining is beside the point but we remain surrounded by letters and words, the shape of which determine how we comprehend what they point out. Planes, signs, screens depend on font choice to be effective. Newspapers and memoranda too.
The degrees may vary but the significance of a font choice just can’t be as simple as you make it seem. Just only to the extent of the value the public ascribes to the type-bearing object. Granted, we may be assigning too much to US State Department documents. But who’s to say?
I suppose the administration's typo-ridden nonsense formatted with a serif-font MIGHT appear more professional. It's certainly possible, not impossible.
> In response, based upon the cumulative effects of these hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United States and friendly foreign nations, the President recognized that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations. The President directed the Department of War to conduct operations against them pursuant to the law of armed conflict. The United States has now reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations.
Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter:
Back to bad...
Deciding to ditch Calibri as a ‘wasteful diversity’ font is both hilarious and sad. I designed Calibri to make reading on modern computer screens easier, and in 2006 Microsoft chose it to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite. Microsoft moved away from Times for good reasons. Calibri performs exceptionally well at small sizes and on standard office monitors, whereas serif fonts like Times New Roman create more visual disturbance. Although serif fonts work well on high-resolution displays, such as those found on modern smartphones, the serifs can introduce unnecessary visual noise on typical office screens and be particularly problematic for users with impaired vision, such as older adults.
Professional typography can be achieved with serif or sans serif fonts. However, that is not very easy with Times New Roman, a typeface older than the current president. Originally crafted in Great Britain for newspaper printing, Times was optimised for paper, with each letterform meticulously cut and tested for specific sizes. In the digital era, larger-size drawings were repurposed as models, resulting in a typeface that appears too thin and sharp when printed at a high quality.
Depending on the situation, fonts with serifs are often considered more classic, but they take more work to get right. While a skilled typographer can produce excellent results with Times New Roman, using the digital default version is not considered professional practice. This font only offers two weights, Regular and Bold, and the Bold version has a very different design that does not fit well. There are many better serif typefaces available. The digital version of Times New Roman, developed in the early days of computing, includes only minimal adjustments to letter pairs. This is particularly noticeable in all-capital words such as ‘CHICAGO’, where the spacing is inconsistent: the letters ‘HIC’ are tightly packed, while ‘CAG’ are spaced too far apart. By contrast, Calibri incorporates extensive spacing adjustments and language-specific refinements.
This decision takes the administration back to the past and back to bad.
(Microsoft could not rectify spacing issues in Times New Roman without altering the appearance of existing documents.)
Personally, I don't have a problem with them changing fonts. I personally think Times isn't a great choice for the reasons articulated in that statement (something open and more legible seems better to me), but I don't think it's a horrible choice either (it's standard and efficient with space). If the State Department wants to use a certain font, it's their prerogative.
What bothers me about the decision is their rationale. If they had just switched without any explanation, it would have seemed more judicious and politic, befitting a department of state. Even better would be to announce a thoughtful font choice with reasoning based on the font itself, without defaulting to some thoughtless option "because that's the way it was done in the past", and moving away from the existing choice "because DEI". As it is, in my opinion, they made themselves look like idiots by obsessing over fonts from the perspective of something like DEI, as if they are paranoid over any possible subatom of DEI infecting their presence. Rubio couldn't just make it about the font, so to speak, he had to get hung up on irrelevant details which makes him (in my opinion) look worse than anything he might be criticizing.
If you read the original announcement, my impression was that the choice of Calibri was because it it made state department functions easier as Calibri was the default in commonly used software (which seems kind of a poor reason to me, but one I can respect on practicality grounds). Legibility was also a concern (as it should be in my opinion). So something functional about Calibri (legibility) becomes "DEI" which is almost like cooties for this administration. Even if you disagree about the legibility of Calibri, denouncing legibility as a criterion per se seems absurd to me.
The whole decision seems like a joke to me and a lost opportunity to set a decent design standard.
> The whole decision seems like a joke to me and a lost opportunity to set a decent design standard.
That would require that the individuals involved actually have taste. Instead, as with everything else from this administration, it's a toot on their favourite dog whistle.
Donald Trump and, frankly, those around him in general are what poor people think rich people are like, but I wouldn’t exactly be one to claim that the design language used by the Biden Administration, like switching to Calibri, are very tasteful either. In leftist popular culture there is a love for modernist style architecture, minimalism, and a disrespect for building beautiful things that cost a lot of money or time. Rightwing circles have their own problems here too, to be fair.
But mandating Greco-Roman architecture by the Trump administration for federal buildings was actually a huge win for taste and design. Though unfortunately many people have become confused about what good design is or the reason to choose that architecture style can’t be overcome by their distaste for President Trump or his administration, which is very arguably deserved based on their conduct, speech, or mannerisms.
When we take away formality or tradition from governmental institutions you take away pieces of civilization and governmental authority that we, really can’t afford to lose. When government buildings are designed to look like shit, for example, one might come to believe the government is shit too (Democrat or Republican run) and the next thing you know you’re running red lights or flipping off the court because the document they sent you in the mail doesn’t look scary and official.
Secretary Duffy was right too about airline travel. Well, there is another to unpack there. Flying is lame compared to rail unless you’re flying across the country, and being shaken down by the TSA is undignified and thus people dress to meet the lack of dignity and respect the government shows them at the airline terminal.
But he’s not wrong.
When you put more care into how you dress you instinctively put more care into how you treat others and how you dress impacts how others treat you. I’m not suggesting a mandate or anything, but I’ll fly in a suit and tie easily and comfortably all day long over stained sweatpants and bringing my comfort dog on to the flight to annoy everyone. Dress how you want, but if you can’t take care of the basics I’m not sure where else you think society is going other than downhill in a fashion.
Verdana is more readable on low-resolution screens than Calibri. I never understood why they didn’t use the former, which already existed, and just extended its character repertoire a bit.
Tbh they should have just mandated it to Aptos for new communications, with TNR and Calibri acceptable for old devices that have not been updated yet. Having people spend effort overriding the default font on their machine is frankly a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Honest question: do you have any financial stake in this? I'm assuming you don't get paid per-document or whatever but do you have any sort of income dependent on Microsoft shipping your font with outlook (whether as the default font or not)?
I don't mean to accuse you of anything but to 99% of the population this is a complete nothingburger and it looks ridiculous that anybody would care (this cuts both ways btw I also think Rubio is being a cringy idiot). I just don't understand what the big deal is here and I really cannot understand why anybody (on either "side") cares.
That’s not true. Sincere engagement is what people expect. A copy-and-paste of a statement is less desirable than, say, Lucas himself coming to post his thoughts, but it is still valuable and not a faux pas. The spirit of HN is: does the post or comment add something of value?
The author states "The formality and authority of serif typefaces are largely socially constructed, and Times New Roman’s origin story and design constraints don’t express these qualities."
Yes, formality and authority are both, quite literally, social constructs. There is NO "natural" or "universal" formality or even authority without human social input.
I would also argue that, though most users cannot distinguish between a serif and sans serif font, they DO understand the serif fonts connote formality. eg in high school they were told to submit their papers in a serif font, or where they read a court opinion they also read serif (even if not the same font).
Sure, the State Department could have selected a different serif font. But a reversion to what was previously used seems completely normal.
Secondarily, I do think Calibri looks far too casual for the State Department. Its what I would use if I were quickly printing out my notes...
I agree with the critique on the "socially constructed" part of this article.
I'd also add that since it was literally The Times newspaper which created the font, and it was considered one of the papers of record for the time (no pun intended), the font was probably designed to have a sense of accuracy, truth and authority. In other words, the institution that created the font is very much part of the socially constructed aspect of this font, giving it that air of authority.
This blog post has good fundamentals but ends up missing the mark. Is Times New Roman the perfect serif? Obviously not. Is it better than Calibri? Yes. Is “hey go back to how things were before” the simplest plan to execute? Also yes.
I personally would’ve liked Georgia since I imagine that’s similarly ubiquitous. People suggesting a custom typeface are out of their mind.
Shouldn't public documents by the government use a free and libre font? In fact, the mentioned Public Sans developed by the US federal government seems to be a great option, as it actually distinguishes the lowercase l and the uppercase I, something that, ironically, all suggested sans-serif alternatives fail to do.
Further, Public Sans was developed by the US govt under the first Trump administration and appears to be an excellent font. That seems to be a wise choice against TNR or Calibri on multiple angles.
Times New Roman is available at no cost under the Microsoft Core Fonts for the Web. (Microsoft no longer distributes this, but the license allows redistribution and redistribution is popular). AFAIK, Apple explicitly licenses the fonts and most open source OS distributions have a package for these fonts.
It's not libre, but font copyright is weird anyway, and the federal government doesn't always need to follow copyright.
You would hope, but changing this font isn't about making anything better, it's that Calibre was apparently a DEI font and had to go. I can't imagine these people thinking highly of an open source (Oooh communism) font that's also designed with accessibility in mind.
Are we still doing the communism thing? I thought the bogeyman is socialism now.
In any case, it would be nice to have some consistency across the government, and if they want to make a change, at least take prior works into account like what the Congress or SCOTUS are doing in their official texts.
Since TNR was designed for print and thus it seems they expected the ink to "bleed" and make the characters appear thicker than they would have been for the actual (leaded?) type face, was this taken into account when turning it into a digital type face?
From reading the article, it appears the answer is no. Has anyone made a TNR digital font that would account for how it would look if printed on 1900's newsprint?
Using either Calibri or Times New Roman makes it look like you did not put any thought into your brand and chose the default in Microsoft Word. The State department probably has certain constraints (i.e. they likely have to choose one of the fonts that ships with Microsoft Word, and possibly a subset of that that also ships on macOS), but they could definitely choose better than the default.
I find the narrow serif typefaces such as Century Schoolbook a bit harder to read than ones with more normal spacing, and I think the US government should optimize for legibility and accessibility over style in routine communications. Palatino or Garamond would probably be my choices.
Word works very well without surprises if you have learned how to use templating and proper headers - the semantics. Big if!
I will claim most people still just do selections and change font/weight.
So what is good design? Something which enforces our geeky ideas of a base font? Or something which let people easily do what they want to do and get work done?
Who should get the least amount of surprise?
Design is taste. Taste leads to principles. Principles makes things easy. Design is also compromise. Compromise is hard. Design is hard.
> The general public doesn’t perceive serif typefaces as professional and authoritative, a priori, before prioritizing their use in formal settings. Instead, people first observe that government, academia, and corporate workplaces disproportionately use serif faces — or are trained to use them — and only then infer that serifs must mean professionalism and authority.
A difficult to stomach claim followed up with evidence that I think supports the opposite than the author intended: the font being in used in The Times of London, which is indeed authoritative and professional despite it being written on cheap paper.
On another note, I would throw up if I had to read legal documents all day in a sans-serif font.
Completely agree. This statement is immediately disproven by the authors following points. Eg pointing out that the supreme court, and other authoritative bodies exclusively use serif fonts...
Of course there is no "a priori", the general public doesn't know what a letter is "a priori" until they are taught. At the same time they are taught which fonts are formal and authoritative and which are not.
Everyone knows Comic Sans is not appropriate for a legal brief. No matter if that is "a priori" or not.
I too stopped when I read that sentence. It's like saying someone can't tell the difference in professionalism between someone in a well tailored three piece suit vs. a sweater and jeans until they've been taught.
Ornateness itself is associated with being attentive to detail and likely more wealthy.
And even if you take them at their word, it's a distinction without a difference. Serif is known to be more professional.
But! As many have pointed out, and he does about TNR in the article: the default font for documents tends to suggest apathy. That argument against TNR is just as strong for Calibri. And there are far better looking, more functional fonts than either of these two.
> Martin Bormann issued a circular (the "normal type decree") to all public offices which declared Fraktur (and its corollary, the Sütterlin-based handwriting) to be Judenlettern (Jewish letters) and prohibited their further use.
I don't know if you meant to invoke pro/anti-Nazi associations with this typeface but it's unfortunate that such a fantastic lettering style carries around a poisonous historical connotation.
I am aware (of the Judenlettern decree). The reference to exactly this was intentional.
(Edit to make this really obvious: The joke here is that "fraktur = nazis" became such a meme that the nazis themselves were annoyed by it and forbade its use, but this is exactly the kind of thing the present administration would either be unaware of or simply ignore and then use fraktur intentionally to pander to neo-nazis.)
Thanks for spelling it out. I had a feeling that's the point you were making, but that level of subtlety has a hard time getting through, even on highbrow hn. Hence I like to err on the side of spelling things out, especially since I'm much more often a reader than a writer.
Fraktur would be apt as the oldest existing typeface. This administration and its supporters are so backward, it makes the 1600s look like mega-liberal ultra-modern science fiction. I’m just waiting for an executive order reintroducing cuneiform.
Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Dropping Calibri was done precisely because it was associated with a reason like this, so you're entirely right.
Wow, the sample shows that 15 point Calibri on official government documents was truly awful. In software when we make a mistake that causes some production issue the best first action is almost always to roll back. Maybe 14 pt TNR isn't the best, but rolling back to it is a defensible decision.
> The Supreme Court’s […] opinions are typeset in Century Schoolbook from that family. Originating in the 19th century, the typeface features more expansive proportions, balanced stroke contrast, and an elegant form, exuding a far more assertive presence than Times New Roman. As the name suggests, it also began life as a textbook face, optimized for legibility. With proper typesetting, it reads far better than a haphazardly produced Word document set in Times New Roman.
The example document is typeset in Century Schoolbook, with the exception of "SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES", which is typeset in Times New Roman.
One thing that I don’t see much mentioned in the article or the comments is that for Word documents at least, Times New Roman may be a more portable default if you want the document to render identically across platforms. Not everyone has Word and Word proprietary fonts installed. Times is proprietary but available on Linux and MacOS and has a metric compatible substitute in the open source. Not sure about Calibre.
Yes, fonts can be bundled with a document but that might impose legal considerations as well as technical.
Using more "standard" fonts like Times New Roman might thus help fight against the word processing monopoly.
As for Calibri, even Microsoft has moved on. They designed a successor font family for even better readability, and that happened before the State Department changed to Calibri. It also has serif variants.
Tangential but did not see it mentioned: Calibri must have been the Microsoft Word default at some point, at least in some parts of the world, because seeing it makes me think this is a Word document by a person that did not change the default font.
> Typographic decisions should be made for a purpose. The Times of London chose the typeface Times New Roman to serve an audience looking for a quick read. Lawyers don’t want their audience to read fast and throw the document away; they want to maximize retention. Achieving that goal requires a different approach—different typefaces, different column widths, different writing conventions. Briefs are like books rather than newspapers. The most important piece of advice we can offer is this: read some good books and try to make your briefs more like them.
This is somewhat ironic as, if I'm not mistaken, it is written by lawyers and uses Times New Roman. (Does the 8th circuit want the reader to read fast and throw the document away?)
At some point in the past I read that serif fonts are better for readability, as the supports at the base of the letters form a line and help the eye stay “on track”. This is never mentioned in TFA, so I assume it’s an urban legend? Personally I much prefer serif fonts when reading longer texts.
Yeah right. Times New Roman rendered using late 1990s software on monitors of that era certainly looked awful. These days text on screens can reasonably look like print.
This was definitely true in the days before hi-res screens and good anti-aliasing, simply because the serifs get lost or become noise in lower-resolution settings. It’s probably less true today.
Of course, in terms of accessibility, there are any number of reasons why someone might prefer to read content in any number of typefaces. Certain typefaces are better for folks with dyslexia. Others may be better for certain folks with ADHD. People with low vision may just prefer a larger typeface.
We have these amazing machines we’ve invented that can display the same text in any number of different ways. At this point, it seems ridiculous to need to mandate a specific typeface for electronic usage. Sure, pick a well-regarded default, but if we want to mandate something, it should be that software provides tools to allow users to adjust textual elements of documents they are reading to suit their own needs.
Thanks for that. I thought the same as phantom784 and never updated my opinion for hi-res screens.
Related to choosing defaults: I like these tips for evaluating the legibility of a body typeface: https://prowebtype.com/selecting-body-text/ They mention one serif advantage, that "most serif typefaces are often ideal choices for reading text due to the noticeable strokes in their ascenders and descenders."
Sure, Times New Roman is not a great font and comes with many negative connotations. But having official government communication look like a highschoolers first digital essay is even worse.
"Instead, people first observe that government, academia, and corporate workplaces disproportionately use serif faces — or are trained to use them — and only then infer that serifs must mean professionalism and authority."
This is an aside, but many people would benefit from appreciating what is observed here, because it impacts an enormous numbers of preferences and perceptions people hold.
A good example is 24 FPS in cinema, which we generally attribute to high quality movies, baked in our value system via a technical/financial limit imposed a century ago. If a movie is presented any higher it gets mentally mapped with soap operas and low quality sitcoms, and it is disorienting to people. The Hobbit tried upping to 48FPS and it was described as "resembling low-budget video like American daytime soap operas rather than cinematic film". Higher quality TV dramas shoot at 24 FPS, intentionally forcing the 3:2 pulldown for TV presentation to signal "no, compare me to a movie not those other TV shows".
There are many areas in our life where we're judging things by this signalling criteria, and not by any real objective measure, yet people will often invent objective measures to assuage themselves that their values aren't so easily manipulated. Bring up 24FPS being a baked in limitation rather than some pinnacle of film making and many will start contriving why no, they actually prefer it because... It's all just noise.
The article was good for the topic at hand. My comment applies to the existence of the debate itself in the context of a failing first world country. For those unfamiliar, the meme is critical of both controlled opposition "sides" of our uniparty of capital interests.
HN isn’t really for memes and quippy references. That’s the main reason you got downvoted, regardless of whether your substantive political point is a good one or not. The original comment matches the vibe of Reddit or Twitter a lot better than HN.
I love Univers. But I don’t think there’s anyone in public office with enough influence and swagger to ever enforce it. At the same time I have a bad feeling about the attention that decisions like this draw and what it may lead to. The article does a great job at portraying the general incompetence in both parties.
I can imagine Beto O’Rourke somewhere dreaming about styling all government communiqués like a page out of Ray Gun. Planning his come back. To set anything issued from Ted Cruz’s office in Zapf Dingbats. War.
[1]: https://contemporary-home-computing.org/prof-dr-style/
You can see for yourself. They certainly would not have used Times New Roman.
But I suppose interoffice memoranda are meant to be skimmed, not read, so TNR or Calibri are both fine.
> There’s nothing inherently wrong with this style, but one would hardly want an official document or legal contract to appear “warm and soft.”
Consider the response I gave to the other child comment on this thread referring to a different document as a revision if that suits you. [1]
I’m sorry. I don’t know of nor do I have the wherewithal to find any correspondence from the State Department to bolster my argument that “humanist fonts” are not always suited to the tenor of all government correspondence. Oddly, none of the press releases on state.gov are available in PDF as far as I can tell.
Wait.
At least imagine this!
> The State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose. These radical activists and weaponized NGOs have advanced censorship crackdowns by foreign states—in each case targeting American speakers and American companies. As such, I have determined that their entry, presence, or activities in the United States have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.
<https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/20...>
In “Carlito”!
It’s already in “Open Sans”, which looks thinner and may have a taller X-height. What do you think of it? Not quite “warm”; certainly “soft”, I think. Should I feel concerned about this news? Or just alright?
Anodyne. That’s the way the words start to look after some time when set like this. How far away is that feeling from “banal”?
[1]: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/SAP-SJ...
In general this is the way I feel about anything written in a Microsoft-, Apple-, or Ubuntu-supplied typeface. If you stick to system fonts you the pinnacle of embodiment of apathy in my book.
Have some backbone, browse through Google fonts, pick something that represents your organization and stick with it.
Even if you are a leasing office, pick a good font. That will make me more likely to lease from you because your attention to typography conveys to me that you will also be attentive to details in building maintainence. If you communicate in Times New Roman and Arial it tells me that you probably are apathetic about mold in the walls and electrical code as well.
Again, the author:
> Indeed, the stronger explanation for Times New Roman’s long reign isn’t aesthetic excellence, but practicality and inertia.
That's completely wrong. Times New Roman was designed for legibility at small sizes, in narrow columns, on absorbent newsprint, printed at high speed. That is, it was designed explicitly for a very specific purpose, which it fills admirably.
None of that should be taken as any kind of comment on the current brouhaha.
While TNR wasn’t designed to evoke banality in its less desirable connotations I do think the way that you’re describing it match sensibilities that the word “banal” can also carry; Ordinary, commonplace. I admit—it’s a stretch I’m taking. But how far from banal is the utilitarian?
All of this exposition only works if people are literate in typography enough to get it. Most people can't even understand literalist art, say nothing about the symbolism of typography.
It's like how the Victorians invented a whole meaning categorization to different species of flowers and then acted like it was universal law. It's a secret in-crowd code. It has no inherent meaning.
How you can conceive a literate society that is not affected by type. The fact that general literacy is apparently declining is beside the point but we remain surrounded by letters and words, the shape of which determine how we comprehend what they point out. Planes, signs, screens depend on font choice to be effective. Newspapers and memoranda too.
The degrees may vary but the significance of a font choice just can’t be as simple as you make it seem. Just only to the extent of the value the public ascribes to the type-bearing object. Granted, we may be assigning too much to US State Department documents. But who’s to say?
> In response, based upon the cumulative effects of these hostile acts against the citizens and interests of the United States and friendly foreign nations, the President recognized that the United States is in a non-international armed conflict with these designated terrorist organizations. The President directed the Department of War to conduct operations against them pursuant to the law of armed conflict. The United States has now reached a critical point where we must use force in self-defense and defense of others against the ongoing attacks by these designated terrorist organizations.
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/SAP-SJ...>
In “Carlito”!
<https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Carlito>
Back to bad...
Deciding to ditch Calibri as a ‘wasteful diversity’ font is both hilarious and sad. I designed Calibri to make reading on modern computer screens easier, and in 2006 Microsoft chose it to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite. Microsoft moved away from Times for good reasons. Calibri performs exceptionally well at small sizes and on standard office monitors, whereas serif fonts like Times New Roman create more visual disturbance. Although serif fonts work well on high-resolution displays, such as those found on modern smartphones, the serifs can introduce unnecessary visual noise on typical office screens and be particularly problematic for users with impaired vision, such as older adults.
Professional typography can be achieved with serif or sans serif fonts. However, that is not very easy with Times New Roman, a typeface older than the current president. Originally crafted in Great Britain for newspaper printing, Times was optimised for paper, with each letterform meticulously cut and tested for specific sizes. In the digital era, larger-size drawings were repurposed as models, resulting in a typeface that appears too thin and sharp when printed at a high quality.
Depending on the situation, fonts with serifs are often considered more classic, but they take more work to get right. While a skilled typographer can produce excellent results with Times New Roman, using the digital default version is not considered professional practice. This font only offers two weights, Regular and Bold, and the Bold version has a very different design that does not fit well. There are many better serif typefaces available. The digital version of Times New Roman, developed in the early days of computing, includes only minimal adjustments to letter pairs. This is particularly noticeable in all-capital words such as ‘CHICAGO’, where the spacing is inconsistent: the letters ‘HIC’ are tightly packed, while ‘CAG’ are spaced too far apart. By contrast, Calibri incorporates extensive spacing adjustments and language-specific refinements.
This decision takes the administration back to the past and back to bad.
(Microsoft could not rectify spacing issues in Times New Roman without altering the appearance of existing documents.)
What bothers me about the decision is their rationale. If they had just switched without any explanation, it would have seemed more judicious and politic, befitting a department of state. Even better would be to announce a thoughtful font choice with reasoning based on the font itself, without defaulting to some thoughtless option "because that's the way it was done in the past", and moving away from the existing choice "because DEI". As it is, in my opinion, they made themselves look like idiots by obsessing over fonts from the perspective of something like DEI, as if they are paranoid over any possible subatom of DEI infecting their presence. Rubio couldn't just make it about the font, so to speak, he had to get hung up on irrelevant details which makes him (in my opinion) look worse than anything he might be criticizing.
If you read the original announcement, my impression was that the choice of Calibri was because it it made state department functions easier as Calibri was the default in commonly used software (which seems kind of a poor reason to me, but one I can respect on practicality grounds). Legibility was also a concern (as it should be in my opinion). So something functional about Calibri (legibility) becomes "DEI" which is almost like cooties for this administration. Even if you disagree about the legibility of Calibri, denouncing legibility as a criterion per se seems absurd to me.
The whole decision seems like a joke to me and a lost opportunity to set a decent design standard.
That would require that the individuals involved actually have taste. Instead, as with everything else from this administration, it's a toot on their favourite dog whistle.
But mandating Greco-Roman architecture by the Trump administration for federal buildings was actually a huge win for taste and design. Though unfortunately many people have become confused about what good design is or the reason to choose that architecture style can’t be overcome by their distaste for President Trump or his administration, which is very arguably deserved based on their conduct, speech, or mannerisms.
When we take away formality or tradition from governmental institutions you take away pieces of civilization and governmental authority that we, really can’t afford to lose. When government buildings are designed to look like shit, for example, one might come to believe the government is shit too (Democrat or Republican run) and the next thing you know you’re running red lights or flipping off the court because the document they sent you in the mail doesn’t look scary and official.
Secretary Duffy was right too about airline travel. Well, there is another to unpack there. Flying is lame compared to rail unless you’re flying across the country, and being shaken down by the TSA is undignified and thus people dress to meet the lack of dignity and respect the government shows them at the airline terminal.
But he’s not wrong.
When you put more care into how you dress you instinctively put more care into how you treat others and how you dress impacts how others treat you. I’m not suggesting a mandate or anything, but I’ll fly in a suit and tie easily and comfortably all day long over stained sweatpants and bringing my comfort dog on to the flight to annoy everyone. Dress how you want, but if you can’t take care of the basics I’m not sure where else you think society is going other than downhill in a fashion.
I don't mean to accuse you of anything but to 99% of the population this is a complete nothingburger and it looks ridiculous that anybody would care (this cuts both ways btw I also think Rubio is being a cringy idiot). I just don't understand what the big deal is here and I really cannot understand why anybody (on either "side") cares.
The author states "The formality and authority of serif typefaces are largely socially constructed, and Times New Roman’s origin story and design constraints don’t express these qualities."
Yes, formality and authority are both, quite literally, social constructs. There is NO "natural" or "universal" formality or even authority without human social input.
I would also argue that, though most users cannot distinguish between a serif and sans serif font, they DO understand the serif fonts connote formality. eg in high school they were told to submit their papers in a serif font, or where they read a court opinion they also read serif (even if not the same font).
Sure, the State Department could have selected a different serif font. But a reversion to what was previously used seems completely normal.
Secondarily, I do think Calibri looks far too casual for the State Department. Its what I would use if I were quickly printing out my notes...
I'd also add that since it was literally The Times newspaper which created the font, and it was considered one of the papers of record for the time (no pun intended), the font was probably designed to have a sense of accuracy, truth and authority. In other words, the institution that created the font is very much part of the socially constructed aspect of this font, giving it that air of authority.
I personally would’ve liked Georgia since I imagine that’s similarly ubiquitous. People suggesting a custom typeface are out of their mind.
It's not libre, but font copyright is weird anyway, and the federal government doesn't always need to follow copyright.
In any case, it would be nice to have some consistency across the government, and if they want to make a change, at least take prior works into account like what the Congress or SCOTUS are doing in their official texts.
From reading the article, it appears the answer is no. Has anyone made a TNR digital font that would account for how it would look if printed on 1900's newsprint?
I find the narrow serif typefaces such as Century Schoolbook a bit harder to read than ones with more normal spacing, and I think the US government should optimize for legibility and accessibility over style in routine communications. Palatino or Garamond would probably be my choices.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Mediaeval
(Note that this font predates Donald Trump's rise.)
I will claim most people still just do selections and change font/weight.
So what is good design? Something which enforces our geeky ideas of a base font? Or something which let people easily do what they want to do and get work done? Who should get the least amount of surprise?
Design is taste. Taste leads to principles. Principles makes things easy. Design is also compromise. Compromise is hard. Design is hard.
A difficult to stomach claim followed up with evidence that I think supports the opposite than the author intended: the font being in used in The Times of London, which is indeed authoritative and professional despite it being written on cheap paper.
On another note, I would throw up if I had to read legal documents all day in a sans-serif font.
Of course there is no "a priori", the general public doesn't know what a letter is "a priori" until they are taught. At the same time they are taught which fonts are formal and authoritative and which are not.
Everyone knows Comic Sans is not appropriate for a legal brief. No matter if that is "a priori" or not.
Ornateness itself is associated with being attentive to detail and likely more wealthy.
And even if you take them at their word, it's a distinction without a difference. Serif is known to be more professional.
But! As many have pointed out, and he does about TNR in the article: the default font for documents tends to suggest apathy. That argument against TNR is just as strong for Calibri. And there are far better looking, more functional fonts than either of these two.
And nobody thinks of the London Times when he sees Times New Roman. It’s just a default font many used in Word.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraktur
I don't know if you meant to invoke pro/anti-Nazi associations with this typeface but it's unfortunate that such a fantastic lettering style carries around a poisonous historical connotation.
(Edit to make this really obvious: The joke here is that "fraktur = nazis" became such a meme that the nazis themselves were annoyed by it and forbade its use, but this is exactly the kind of thing the present administration would either be unaware of or simply ignore and then use fraktur intentionally to pander to neo-nazis.)
They used Fraktur extensively before 1941 and it's closely associated with Nazi imagery. This is all explained in that link I posted.
I prefer to think of Lie groups, but it's rife in the Nazi propaganda of the 30s, official documents etc.
In seriousness: Comic Sans seems to be a good font for dyslexic people and helps them read.
https://dyslexichelp.org/why-is-comic-sans-good-for-dyslexia...
The example document is typeset in Century Schoolbook, with the exception of "SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES", which is typeset in Times New Roman.
Yes, fonts can be bundled with a document but that might impose legal considerations as well as technical.
Using more "standard" fonts like Times New Roman might thus help fight against the word processing monopoly.
https://microsoft.design/articles/a-change-of-typeface-micro...
No knock on Calibri, which I admire.
(edited to put the link on its own line.)
> Typographic decisions should be made for a purpose. The Times of London chose the typeface Times New Roman to serve an audience looking for a quick read. Lawyers don’t want their audience to read fast and throw the document away; they want to maximize retention. Achieving that goal requires a different approach—different typefaces, different column widths, different writing conventions. Briefs are like books rather than newspapers. The most important piece of advice we can offer is this: read some good books and try to make your briefs more like them.
This is somewhat ironic as, if I'm not mistaken, it is written by lawyers and uses Times New Roman. (Does the 8th circuit want the reader to read fast and throw the document away?)
Of course, in terms of accessibility, there are any number of reasons why someone might prefer to read content in any number of typefaces. Certain typefaces are better for folks with dyslexia. Others may be better for certain folks with ADHD. People with low vision may just prefer a larger typeface.
We have these amazing machines we’ve invented that can display the same text in any number of different ways. At this point, it seems ridiculous to need to mandate a specific typeface for electronic usage. Sure, pick a well-regarded default, but if we want to mandate something, it should be that software provides tools to allow users to adjust textual elements of documents they are reading to suit their own needs.
Related to choosing defaults: I like these tips for evaluating the legibility of a body typeface: https://prowebtype.com/selecting-body-text/ They mention one serif advantage, that "most serif typefaces are often ideal choices for reading text due to the noticeable strokes in their ascenders and descenders."
The obvious solution is doing what many large companies, as well as other governments are doing. Create your own Font. (e.g. https://styleguide.bundesregierung.de/sg-de/basiselemente/sc... https://www.ibm.com/plex/)
This is an aside, but many people would benefit from appreciating what is observed here, because it impacts an enormous numbers of preferences and perceptions people hold.
A good example is 24 FPS in cinema, which we generally attribute to high quality movies, baked in our value system via a technical/financial limit imposed a century ago. If a movie is presented any higher it gets mentally mapped with soap operas and low quality sitcoms, and it is disorienting to people. The Hobbit tried upping to 48FPS and it was described as "resembling low-budget video like American daytime soap operas rather than cinematic film". Higher quality TV dramas shoot at 24 FPS, intentionally forcing the 3:2 pulldown for TV presentation to signal "no, compare me to a movie not those other TV shows".
There are many areas in our life where we're judging things by this signalling criteria, and not by any real objective measure, yet people will often invent objective measures to assuage themselves that their values aren't so easily manipulated. Bring up 24FPS being a baked in limitation rather than some pinnacle of film making and many will start contriving why no, they actually prefer it because... It's all just noise.
I imagine a 20-strong commission deciding whether to publish them in colibri or times new Roman.
Taxes at work
edit for the silent downvoters:
The article was good for the topic at hand. My comment applies to the existence of the debate itself in the context of a failing first world country. For those unfamiliar, the meme is critical of both controlled opposition "sides" of our uniparty of capital interests.
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
Arguably the OP borders on flamebait if that's the standard.
> Avoid generic tangents.
OP encapsulates an example of my comment, and is not a generic tangent.
> Omit internet tropes.
meme != trope
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
Like the first point, all or nothing.
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
Point taken.