I’m late to the tech news party. The weather here in Valencia has been literal hell for the past month. Combine that with bad, short sleep nights and an aching right upper arm, and you’ll understand just how poorly focused and barely functioning I have been lately. I’ve had enough energies to work and keep up with the news, but not to react to them promptly.

So, Microsoft is switching from Calibri to Aptos as their default font for Office documents. From their announcement blog post (curiously published on Medium):

For 15 years, our beloved Calibri was Microsoft’s default font and crown keeper of office communications, but as you know, our relationship has come to a natural end. We changed. The technology we use every day has changed. And so, our search of the perfect font for higher resolution screens began. The font needed to have sharpness, uniformity, and be great for display type. It was exciting at times, but also intimidating. How do you replace Calibri? How do you find that one true font that can take its place as the rightful default?

As we shared before, Microsoft commissioned five new fonts: Bierstadt, Grandview, Seaford, Skeena, and Tenorite. It was our hope that one of them would be our next default font for Microsoft 365. All of them were added to the drop-down font picker. From there, as you got a chance to use them, we listened to your impassioned feedback and chose the one that resonated most which was Bierstadt. But as there was a change of guard so too the name. Bierstadt is now known as Aptos. 

I got acquainted with Calibri when I started using Windows more frequently from 2016 onwards, both for work-related reasons, and because an old hardware interest — vintage ThinkPads — coincidentally rekindled around the same time. I’ve found Calibri to be a good ‘work font’ — meaning I wouldn’t use it in a book design project, or for some other project involving distinctive typography. But it is a font that works well on screen and it’s easy enough on the eye when reading documents and at smaller font sizes.

I’ve examined the five candidates Microsoft commissioned in search for a Calibri replacement and I found them all decent for the purpose, with the strong exception of Tenorite, which doesn’t seem a good fit for the job. Remember, the purpose here is to provide a default document font that is a good workhorse for display type and text-oriented applications. It doesn’t have to be a fancy font for artistic typographic projects. It has to be pleasant, neutral, possibly readable at all sizes (but especially smaller sizes, say 14 points and below), and as Microsoft’s Si Daniels writes in the afore-linked post, have sharpness, uniformity, and be great for display type.

If I had to choose my personal favourite among those candidates, I would have opted for Seaford. Aptos’s character shapes have a roundness which I think works a bit against the font’s legibility when you read big chunks of text. Seaford’s character shapes have more movement and flow, and feel more airy when you read longer paragraphs. They hook your eye more as it parses the text, if you get my drift. But Aptos isn’t a bad final choice by any means.

I learnt about this font change via this post by John Gruber, and while I understood his critique, I don’t entirely agree with it, and especially his overall tone rubbed me up the wrong way. Remarks like, Companies that have taste do not conduct design via surveys or, But if Microsoft feels the need to chase fleeting fashion rather than timeless style, Aptos is the trendiest of the bunch are the typical jabs thrown at Microsoft I still sometimes hear from long-time Mac users who have been holding a grudge since the 1990s. Today’s Microsoft isn’t a tasteless company when it comes to hardware design. And you know what? They have been making interesting progress with regard to software design as well. It certainly feels Microsoft hasn’t rested on their laurels — or even regressed in certain areas — as Apple has with Mac OS’s UI. 

But I’m digressing. Where I disagree most with Gruber is when he writes:

I don’t know why Microsoft states as fact that Calibri somehow needed to be replaced as their default font just because it’s 15 years old. A good default font should stand the test of time for decades, if not a literal lifetime. 

And in the related footnote 3:

Apple’s default font (as seen today in apps like Pages, Numbers, and TextEdit, and in bygone times in apps like MacWrite and SimpleText) has been nearly unchanged since 1991 or so, switching only from Helvetica to its superior expanded sibling Helvetica Neue. Prior to Helvetica, the default font was Geneva, Susan Kare’s pixel font homage to Helvetica. No one is going to make a movie about Aptos. 

A good default font should stand the test of time for decades, if not a literal lifetime. — Yes, generally speaking this is true. But we are talking about computer fonts designed mainly for display work. What worked well on computer displays from 20 or 30 years ago may not work as well on current displays, especially considering just how much their technology has evolved over the past three decades. What once was the entire screen of a Macintosh computer, it’s now as big as a postage stamp on the much bigger, much denser displays we use today. I don’t think Microsoft is “chasing fleeting fashion rather than timeless style”. They have realised that Calibri, while still being a nice font for its intended purpose, may not be the optimal choice for current displays. For me, it makes sense that, as technology evolves, certain elements that go with it have to evolve as well.

Having elegant, tasteful fonts in a computer system is certainly a good thing, but there’s a strong element of pragmatism here that shouldn’t be overlooked. These Office default fonts have to be ‘work fonts’. They have to keep working well in documents (especially on screen) as display technology evolves. Like system fonts. The system font of the original Macintosh was Chicago, which lasted until Mac OS 7.6. It was a great font that was very utilitarian and quite legible in the era of low-resolution displays and aliased fonts. But it definitely would not work in today’s Macs and on current displays. 

After Chicago, Mac OS’s system font became Charcoal in Mac OS 8 and 9 (Charcoal’s design was essentially a refresh of Chicago and worked better on the Mac displays of the mid- to late 1990s). With Mac OS X came Lucida Grande — still my favourite — which lasted a long time, from Mac OS Developer Preview 3 to Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks included (about 13 years). Then we had an odd year, with Mac OS X 10.10 and Helvetica Neue as system font, to finally change with the Apple-designed San Francisco, appearing in Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan.

With that sore exception of Helvetica Neue, notice how all the changes in Mac OS’s system fonts have been necessary steps to maintain good legibility and accessibility as computer displays have evolved. And while as a personal preference I think Lucida Grande would still look great on current Macs, San Francisco is perfect on retina displays. When it comes to system fonts, Apple hasn’t “chased fleeting fashion rather than timeless style”, it has simply adapted as technology changed. It’s essentially the same thing Microsoft is doing with the transition from Calibri to Aptos.

Apple’s default font (as seen today in apps like Pages, Numbers, and TextEdit, and in bygone times in apps like MacWrite and SimpleText) has been nearly unchanged since 1991 or so, switching only from Helvetica to its superior expanded sibling Helvetica Neue. Prior to Helvetica, the default font was Geneva, Susan Kare’s pixel font homage to Helvetica. — Gruber here boasts Apple’s choices as being smart and superior compared to Microsoft’s. But while I agree that Geneva is a font that has aged incredibly well and is still very good and very legible at 12 points in TextEdit — unpopular opinion warning — I seriously question Apple’s judgement in sticking with Helvetica and Helvetica Neue as default font in TextEdit and the iWork apps for so long. 

I always found Helvetica to be a good typeface at 16–18 points and above, and definitely more in print than on screen. I guess that Helvetica worked as system font in iOS 6 and earlier because it was used in bold style in many parts of the system; and the portable nature of iOS devices means you typically kept them closer to your eyes than a laptop or desktop computer display, and that really helps with a font’s legibility.

But Helvetica at 12 points, which obstinately remains TextEdit and other Apple apps’ default font after all these years, is not a good choice at all for reading and writing text on current displays. Even with the crispness of retina displays, it’s just too small and has poor flow — the tight spacing between characters in Helvetica leads to what I non-professionally call ‘type clumps’, letter groupings that are a bit more difficult to parse when reading text at small sizes because there’s simply too little space between them. At 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 points, Geneva is still a better font than Helvetica. Open TextEdit on your Mac and see for yourself. 

Helvetica clearly didn’t work as system font when Apple introduced it in Yosemite, and the fact it only lasted one year is quite telling. (I was vigorously critic of Helvetica Neue as system font at the time). That’s why I find very curious that Apple keeps shoving Helvetica in our faces as default document font after all this time. 

No one is going to make a movie about Aptos. — What a stupid quip. Helvetica is a historically important typeface that has been used and abused for a very long time. Aptos is a computer font that’s been essentially designed for a specific purpose. It’s like comparing a classic car from Ferrari, Mercedes or Jaguar to a Chinese economy electric car.