"Calibri and Times New Roman have been at war for years. And now the two fonts are once again pitted against each other after the U.S. State Department declared it will be swapping its current official typeface, Calibri, for Times New Roman. It's a full circle moment, considering the State Department ditched Times New Roman for Calibri in just 2023. Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote that switching to Calibri was "wasteful" and "achieved nothing except the degradation of the department's official correspondence" in an internal department memo obtained by Reuters and The New York Times."
"Lucas de Groot designed Calibri in 2007 specifically for readability on computer screens. The width and curvature of its simple letterform was optimized to be easy to read, and it replaced Times New Roman as the default font in Microsoft Office in 2007 (before being replaced by Apotos in 2023). In 2023, the State Department decided to replace Times New Roman with Calibri for all official communications and memos. It was a bid for greater accessibility throughout the organization. At the time, then Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, Times New Roman "can introduce accessibility issues for individuals with disabilities who use Optical Character Recognition technology or screen readers." Not everyone was happy about the decision, but de Groot believes it was the right choice. "There were sound reasons for moving away from Times," de Groot tells Fast Company in an email. "Calibri performs exceptionally well at small sizes and on standard office monitors, whereas serif fonts like Times New Roman tend to appear more distorted.""
"The type designer behind the sans-serif font Calibri calls Rubio's decision "hilarious and regrettable.""
The U.S. State Department announced it will swap its official typeface from Calibri back to Times New Roman, reversing a 2023 change. Secretary of State Marco Rubio characterized the earlier move to Calibri as "wasteful" and said it "achieved nothing except the degradation of the department's official correspondence" in an internal memo. Lucas de Groot, the Calibri designer, called Rubio's decision "hilarious and regrettable" and defended Calibri's readability on screens and at small sizes. The 2023 shift to Calibri aimed to improve accessibility for users of OCR and screen readers, while opponents emphasize tradition and perceived formality in official documents.
Read at Fast Company
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