Microsoft is changing its default font – the one used off the bat in Microsoft 365 apps, including the Office apps many folks use every day like Word – and the company wants users to pick their favorite option from a choice of five.
As detailed in a Microsoft 365 blog post, the five options are: Tenorite, Bierstadt, Skeena, Seaford, and Grandview. While this isn’t a formal vote as such, the software giant encourages people to head on over to social media (linking the Microsoft 365 Twitter account) and make their voices heard.
So, if you have any opinion on the font options and feel a compulsion to chip in, provide your feedback…
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As you’re likely aware, Calibri is the current default font of Microsoft’s choosing, and its reign has lasted since 2007 (before that, it was that old chestnut Times New Roman).
Regardless of which font is finally chosen as the successor to Calibri as the new default, all of the five new efforts will be available in Office apps, and indeed they are present now. Pop into Office 365 and you can see and use the fonts to check them out in their full glory.
Font of all knowledge
The blog post goes into a lot of detail about the design philosophy behind each of the five different fonts, which “span the various sans-serif styles – humanist, geometric, swiss-style, and industrial”.
In short, Tenorite is a very rounded, wide and crisp font, Bierstadt is clear-cut and ‘mechanical’, Skeena looks clean and has distinctive thicker and thinner strokes for the different bits of the letters, Seaford offers “gently organic and asymmetric forms”, with Grandview looking rather, well, grand, and built around being highly legible and generally standing out.
We’re finding ourselves gravitating towards Skeena’s clear and distinctive appearance, at least on initial impressions. So, there’s our vote, Microsoft, if you’re reading…
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