A shame they didn’t opt for Public Sans, which was designed by the US Web Design System team. Though I see it only supports Latin characters at the moment, which might make it unsuitable for use at State.
Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
91–100 of 267 posts
Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
#92What a case study in the critical importance of sensible defaults, that they could end up enforced as State Department policy.
Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
#93I've wondered in the past what the cultural influence of font legibility is. I'd imagine someone who grew up reading serif fonts would feel much more comfortable reading a document with a serif typeface than someone like myself who doesn't interact much with serif fonts.
For me serif fonts look kind of off and weird. On the other hand monospaced fonts look strangely beautiful to me so I use monospaced fonts on my blog and in other personal writings. I'm guessing that preference isn't biological though, but more likely due to me spending every day reading and writing code. My brain is just best adapted for working with monospaced fonts.
I think about questions like this often when it comes to UI/UX decisions because I think some modern UI/UX is arguably objectively bad in a world where there only exists subjective users. For example, the qwerty keyboard is god awful, but does it make sense for the next Apple Macbook to ship with a dvorak keyboard layout to fix querty's UX issues? Probably not.
Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
#94Calibri is Microsoft-encumbered, no? Shame they didn't use a free font like Liberation Sans.
Microsoft is a domestic company. That's probably a plus for vendor selection.
Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Logistics probably. With out a doubt you know this font is deployed on most systems around the world. It’s maintained by one of the largest companies in the world. And its provenance can be assured.
Now I want to make a custom Times New Roman font with unpredictable ligatures and 0-width vector data so poorly monitored systems create false data when printed in hardcopy.
I’m reminded of the humorous screenshot quoting “Times New Bastard”
Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
#96I find any document written in serif feels more professional and well considered. As a result, when I look at older documents, it seems that the past had higher standards for content and presentation.
Seeing a Calibri memo from the state department would make me think that it’s illegitimate.
Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
#97Of course blame "the millennials".
Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
A/B/C paper series formats are based on metrics system and therefore, morally evil and unfit for the US consumption.
In case anyone is unaware, A0 is 1m^2 in size, and each adjacent number is half the size (i.e. A1 = 500 000 mm^2, A2 = 250 000 mm^2, A3 = 125 000 mm^2, A4 = 62 500 mm^2). This has the great advantage of allowing documents to be easily up and down-scaled on a photocopier - i.e. an A3 document can be printed at 50% scale on an A4 sheet. I wonder if anyone ever tried to do something similar with imperial units (AKA Engl…
You're correct, but also forgetting the best part. The ratio between width and length stays the same!!
This specifically is what allows easy up-/downscaling for an A* size.
Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is such a weird HN-style take. I would bet money the start of this selection was "give me a list of the fonts on all our computers right now" and then they picked one. Probably Calibri after seeing it as the default in some other application. Nobody at the State Department is diving into the intricacies of font licensure.
Can you describe what "HN-style take" means to you? I'm saying that a decision should be made by weighing pros/cons by someone qualified to make them. If that's HN-y, then that sounds great. It doesn't sound like how you described this process is anything short of incompetence or "phoning it in". Which, I'm sure is a valid explanation for how they ended up deciding it. But, I'm using the word "dumb" in not a literal…
Everyone at the State Department is using Word. Word includes Calibri. That's literally the only thing he's concerned about.
Re: Times New Roman is being phased out at the State Department, replaced by Calibri
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now I want to make a custom Times New Roman font with unpredictable ligatures and 0-width vector data so poorly monitored systems create false data when printed in hardcopy.
I’m reminded of the humorous screenshot quoting “Times New Bastard”
Just looked this up: that's fantastic.