Technology

Hmmm…almost exact 15 years after the 2007 MS design patent on Calibri (which had a duration of 15 years) they switch to a new, alternative Office-exclusive font for the next 15 years.

Only to be used ‘freely’ for personal use and again probibited to be bundled with, let’s say, other products like LibreOffice.

It’s all about lock-in and revenue, plain and simple. The same business strategy like Apple with the default San Francisco font and Adobe with the default Minion Pro font. I understand why they do it this way, I just don’t like it.

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.

Fuckin' hell though. You gotta respect someone who's been in the game that long. And his one, single, sole job is fonts. That's dedication. Or maybe just a gravy train. But either way, dude has predicated an entire career on how letters look. Mad respect.

Is this maybe a ploy to date things again? I can't remember exactly what it was (I think it was in a Darknet Diaries episode) but there was a court case where a guy came in with a document proving something in his favour. It was a contract or letter from the other side of his case. They managed to prove it was fake because it was in Calibri, Office's default font, which hadn't even been invented back when the document was supposedly written.

Should have kept the original name though.

"Bierstadt" would have been awesome!

At first I thought there was something strange about the "s," but I couldn't put my finger on it. So I looked at the other fonts they considered and I realized I didn't like the "s" in those either. Then I looked at the font on the webpage and realized all "s"es look wrong to me.

I guess I just have to live this way now.

Friendship with Calibri ended. Aptos is my new best friend now. [insert related meme here]

Damn. I was hoping it would be Papyrus.

@leo I feel like some of the other suggested fonts were a bit stronger contenders than Bierstadt, though admittedly the name is awesome.

I'll miss you, Calibri!

Never will we come back to the glory of Courier New

I was...expecting something better than Calibri, but this new font is decidedly less versatile and pleasant to the eye IMHO.

But... I like Calibri... 🙁

I havent't read the article yet, but I hope they fixed the subpar rendering for general use, because Bierstadt looked terrible in general desktop apps. In fact, none of the proposed typefaces rendered well under native Windows ClearType.

Calibri is honestly a great font. Easy on the eyes and easy to read.

🕈︎✋︎☠︎☝︎👎︎✋︎☠︎☝︎💧︎ ☝︎✌︎☠︎☝︎ ♐︎□︎❒︎ ●︎♓︎♐︎♏︎📬︎

Book Antiqua gang rise up!

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Is there a good design comm here yet?

Arial or bust