Microsoft Word’s subtle font change has affected millions of people. Have you noticed?
When you read – a book, a road sign, a billboard, this article – how much do you really pay attention to the letters? If you’re like most people, the answer is probably not at all.
But even if you don’t really notice them, you can tell if something has changed subtly. That’s a feeling some people have had in recent weeks when they turn on their Microsoft Word programs.
After 17 years of Calibri as Word’s default font, many users suddenly found themselves typing a new font called Aptos. The change also affects the appearance of PowerPoint, Outlook and Excel.
Letters are letters, but for designers and typography fans they are very important.
Why the change?
“We wanted to bring something new and fresh that was really originally designed for the kind of modern computer age,” says Jon Friedman, the company’s corporate vice president for design and research, who led the initiative.
(Technically, Aptos and Calibri are fonts, while a “font” refers to a specific area or size, such as italics or bold. But in practice, “font” is often used as a synonym for “typeface,” including by Microsoft employees interviewed for this article.)
The great divide in the world of fonts is between serifs, or letters with small lines or tails on the edges, and sans-serif, letters without lines that look smoother.
Like Calibri, Aptos is a sans-serif font, but with something extra, Microsoft says.
Centuries ago, in the early days of printing presses, almost all typefaces had serifs. “Sans serif was intended for billboards,” Mr. Friedman said. “They were big, blocky letters and they called them ‘grotesque.’ They were bold and easy to read from afar.” At the time, sans serif was rarely used for more than one or two words or a single sentence.
Aptos would be classified as a ‘neo-grotesque’ font.
“It was neo-grotesque when the artistry started,” Mr. Friedman said, referring to an era in the mid-20th century. “Designers started choosing sans serif fonts. That was the birth of Helvetica and Arial, which were more widely used and were sans serif fonts.”
It helped that most people thought sans-serif writing looked better on a computer, which was quickly becoming the writing instrument of choice worldwide.
As for Aptos, “we wanted it to be a little more quirky and playful,” even if it was sans-serif, Mr. Friedman said. “Sans-serif fonts are quite straightforward, clear and easy to read, but sometimes they lack some of the whimsy that serif fonts can have.”
The designer, Steve Matteson, “brought something more – he called them ‘imperfections’: little bits of change that are slightly different from a typical sans-serif font,” Mr. Friedman added.
“You know, you have to try to sneak a little bit of humanity in,” Mr. Matteson said in a Microsoft interview statement about the change. “I did that by adding a little swing to the R and the double-stacked g.”
In most sans-serif fonts, “the capital ‘I’ is a line, and the lowercase ‘l’ is a line,” Mr. Friedman said. “The weight is slightly different, but most people can’t see it. In Aptos, the lowercase letter ‘l’ has a small curve at the bottom. Illinois. Illustration. It is very clear what you read, even if it is sans serif.”
“It’s quirky and creates a more natural feel, bringing in some of the serif font ‘je ne sais quoi’,” he added.
Another subtlety: above the lowercase i’s and j’s there are round dots, as opposed to squares as in Calibri. You may notice this when you type “je ne sais quoi” into Aptos.
So how exactly do you design a font? The answer is one that creative types everywhere could appreciate: “You have to start somewhere,” Mr. Friedman said.
“One typeface designer could start by roughly sketching the entire alphabet,” he said. “Others may start with a particular letter that they think is a challenge.”
“You think a font is so small,” he added. ‘They’re just letters. But it requires deep thought; it is not a trivial concept.”
The end result, Aptos, is Microsoft’s trademarked intellectual property.
“Even though some people may see the difference and care passionately, and others may not seem to care, the moment we change it, people notice that something has changed,” Mr. Friedman said.
Some of those people came forward on social media with a laundry list of complaints. (Others said they liked the new font.)
A switch to a well-known product often brings protests. When The New York Times added color to its printed front page in 1997, some people complained that the dull paper had become unnecessarily gaudy, although such complaints quickly faded as readers grew accustomed to the change.
For those who never learn to appreciate the neo-grotesque, there is a solution. Remember what ‘standard’ means.
If you are using a Windows device, navigate to Home and open the Font Dialog Box Launcher. On a Mac, go to Format and click Font. Change the font to one you like better. Set it to Default. Aptos will no longer darken your door.
The New York Times, however, retains its color.