- Microsoft announced this week that it’s changing its default Office font to Aptos.
- Aptos is supposed to “embody professionalism” and is easier to read at a small scale.
- The change is part of Microsoft’s efforts to adapt to evolving technology, like higher resolution screens.
Microsoft Office users may notice that their documents look different.
Microsoft announced this week that it’s replacing Calibri, its default font for the last 15 years, with a new font, Aptos.
The tech giant said it has begun rolling out its new font to “hundreds of millions” of users of Microsoft Office programs like Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint. Aptos will officially become the default font for all customers in the upcoming months.
The tech giant describes Aptos as a “bold, well-defined, directive, and constrained” font that “embodies professionalism, adaptability, subtle flourishes of expression, and more clarity.” The font’s design, Microsoft claims, will allow for easier legibility, especially at small text sizes.
Microsoft said that changes to its default font were needed to adapt its suite of Microsoft Office tools to higher resolution screens as technology continues to evolve.
“The font needed to have sharpness, uniformity, and be great for display type,” Microsoft said in its blog post.
Aptos — which was designed by Steve Matteson, a type designer who has created original fonts for companies like Toyota and Google — is one of five new custom fonts that Microsoft commissioned in 2021 as part of its search for a new default font, according to its 2021 blog post.
After the prototypes were announced, Microsoft asked its Office suite users to provide feedback on which font they preferred. The other four fonts commissioned — Grandview, Seaford, Skeena, and Tenorite — will be added to the drop-down font menu. Calibri will stay in the drop-down menu.
The font, which was originally called Bierstadt, is named after Matteson’s “favorite unincorporated town” in Santa Cruz, California, which is known for its fog, beaches, redwood trees, and mountains.
“A default font is often the first impression we make; it’s the visual identity we present to other people via our resumes, documents, or emails,” Microsoft wrote in a 2021 blog post. “And just as people and the world around us age and grow, so too should our modes of expression.”
The announcement of Microsoft’s new default font comes just weeks after the company launched its beta version of Windows Copilot, an AI-tool that can generate images and text, and summarize text, for users to test.
Source: I N S I D E R
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