Enlarge / Microsoft’s new “Aptos” font family. (credit: Microsoft)
Two years ago, Microsoft announced its plans to move away from using Calibri as the default typeface for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, and the other apps in the suite formerly known as Microsoft Office. The company introduced five candidates for replacement fonts, and a winner has emerged: a font family called Aptos, formerly known as Bierstadt.
Microsoft has never laid out in so many words why it feels it needs to move away from Calibri, though today’s announcement implies that Aptos was made with high-resolution, high-density displays in mind. Calibri replaced Times New Roman as the suite’s default font in Office 2007, at a time before “Retina” displays and when 1024×768 and 1280×800 screens were still the norm—a ClearType font, Calibri itself was a response to the shift from CRT to LCD screens.
Aptos was created by Steve Matteson, who is also responsible for Windows 3.1’s original TrueType fonts (including Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier New) as well as Segoe, which has been Windows’ default system font since Vista and is also used for Microsoft’s current logo. Given Matteson’s history with Microsoft, choosing Aptos over the others feels like the safest possible choice.
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