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Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

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Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#81

Post by snickerbockers »

LucasFonts wrote: post #28

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: Back to bad... Deciding to ditch Calibri as a ‘wasteful diversity’ font is both hilarious and sad. I designed Calibri to make reading on modern computer screens easier, and in 2006 Microsoft chose it to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite. Microsoft moved away from Times for good reasons.…

Honest question: do you have any financial stake in this? I'm assuming you don't get paid per-document or whatever but do you have any sort of income dependent on Microsoft shipping your font with outlook (whether as the default font or not)?

I don't mean to accuse you of anything but to 99% of the population this is a complete nothingburger and it looks ridiculous that anybody would care (this cuts both ways btw I also think Rubio is being a cringy idiot). I just don't understand what the big deal is here and I really cannot understand why anybody (on either "side") cares.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#82

Post by croisillon »

LucasFonts wrote: post #28

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: Back to bad... Deciding to ditch Calibri as a ‘wasteful diversity’ font is both hilarious and sad. I designed Calibri to make reading on modern computer screens easier, and in 2006 Microsoft chose it to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite. Microsoft moved away from Times for good reasons.…

repost ;) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46229533

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#83

Post by tuetuopay »

atorodius wrote: post #71

Tangential but did not see it mentioned: Calibri must have been the Microsoft Word default at some point, at least in some parts of the world, because seeing it makes me think this is a Word document by a person that did not change the default font.

It absolutely was, from Office 2007 up to Office 365 where they switched to Aptos (2023-ish?)

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#84

Post by swed420 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #75
swed420 wrote: post #18

[flagged]

HN isn’t really for memes and quippy references. That’s the main reason you got downvoted, regardless of whether your substantive political point is a good one or not. The original comment matches the vibe of Reddit or Twitter a lot better than HN.

In that case, we'd better stop saying "Stallman was right"

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#85

Post by Perceval »

mjmsmith wrote: post #49
xattt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the US government, and it could easily develop their own Liberty- or Freedom-type if the current administration wanted to leave their own mark.

Trump Grotesque.

Trump does use Akzidenz Grotesk Bold Extended as one of his main campaign fonts

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#86

Post by tmoertel »

mjmsmith wrote: post #49
xattt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the US government, and it could easily develop their own Liberty- or Freedom-type if the current administration wanted to leave their own mark.

Trump Grotesque.

You joke, but...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Mediaeval

(Note that this font predates Donald Trump's rise.)

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#87

Post by moron4hire »

tolerance wrote: post #61
moron4hire wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, you can't argue the font choice signals banality in the same article in which you argue that readers aren't sophisticated enough on font choice to catch that serifs are supposed to signal professionalism.

Why not? One quality is inherent, the other inherited. The typeface was developed with banality in mind and presumably become popular because of its utility in this respect. The ensuing popularity in word processors and on the Web likely lead to the idea that it’s more professional than others. Again, the author: > Indeed, the stronger explanation for Times New Roman’s long reign isn’t aesthetic excellence, but pract…

Because font choice outside of large strokes like fantasy fonts is meaningless.

All of this exposition only works if people are literate in typography enough to get it. Most people can't even understand literalist art, say nothing about the symbolism of typography.

It's like how the Victorians invented a whole meaning categorization to different species of flowers and then acted like it was universal law. It's a secret in-crowd code. It has no inherent meaning.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#88

Post by layer8 »

LucasFonts wrote: post #28

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: Back to bad... Deciding to ditch Calibri as a ‘wasteful diversity’ font is both hilarious and sad. I designed Calibri to make reading on modern computer screens easier, and in 2006 Microsoft chose it to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite. Microsoft moved away from Times for good reasons.…

Verdana is more readable on low-resolution screens than Calibri. I never understood why they didn’t use the former, which already existed, and just extended its character repertoire a bit.

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#89

Post by yawaramin »

loughnane wrote: post #37
LucasFonts wrote: post #28

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: Back to bad... Deciding to ditch Calibri as a ‘wasteful diversity’ font is both hilarious and sad. I designed Calibri to make reading on modern computer screens easier, and in 2006 Microsoft chose it to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite. Microsoft moved away from Times for good reasons.…

Fyi since your account is new. It’s a faux pas here to have a “company” account.

SQLite would like to have a word...

Re: Times New American: A Tale of Two Fonts

#90

Post by yawaramin »

LucasFonts wrote: post #28

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: Back to bad... Deciding to ditch Calibri as a ‘wasteful diversity’ font is both hilarious and sad. I designed Calibri to make reading on modern computer screens easier, and in 2006 Microsoft chose it to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite. Microsoft moved away from Times for good reasons.…

Tbh they should have just mandated it to Aptos for new communications, with TNR and Calibri acceptable for old devices that have not been updated yet. Having people spend effort overriding the default font on their machine is frankly a waste of taxpayer dollars.
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