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Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

reuters.com

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Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#551

Post by [deleted] »

BasilofBasiley wrote: post #534
LucasFonts wrote: post #475

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: The decision to abandon Calibri on the grounds of it being a so-called “wasteful diversity font” is both amusing and regrettable. Calibri was specifically designed to enhance readability on modern computer screens and was selected by Microsoft in 2007 to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite…

>Serif fonts are often perceived as more traditional, but they are also more demanding to use effectively. While a skilled typographer can, in theory, produce excellent results with Times, using it in its default digital form is not considered professional practice. This reads like your CEO is mixing an argument against serifs with an argument against Times specifically. Later on they make a case against Times' lack…

[deleted]

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#552

Post by pas »

corrections wrote: post #543
rathole26 wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To change tens to hundreds of millions of documents, roughly 50-200M USD.

It’s only for the department of state though, and the previous cost to change to Calibri was about $145,000 over two fiscal years.

that was the cost of additional a11y remediation, likely the direct cost of using a different font/typeface going forward was the time it took for people to read the memo and get used to change the formatting (maybe even set a new default, maybe change templates).

https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/full_text_of_marco_rubio_...

of course simply comparing years without a control we have no way of knowing the effect of the change (well, if we were to look at the previous years at least we could see if this 145K difference was somehow significant or not)

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#553

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

JetSetWilly wrote: post #545
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that, even if that's all true (and I do agree that studies should have been conducted), the two positions are: a) We made this change because we think it will help certain people and b) We made this change because we fundamentally disagree with attempts to help certain people, whether effective or not I think b) is a lot worse than a). Or, to put it another way, has the current administration demonstrated a bene…

No, you're just falling into the sort of left wing "people who disagree with me can only do so because they are a bad person" trap. You can read the full text of the actual memo (and a reasonable interpretation of it) below, but it appears to me that the principle reason as stated is that Calibri is less professional, inconsistent with all other government communications and even inconsistent letterheads on the very…

> No, you're just falling into the sort of left wing "people who disagree with me can only do so because they are a bad person" trap.

I'm not sure where this conclusion came from. I even acknowledged that the original change was problematic.

> the principle reason as stated is that Calibri is less professional

That's fair, but it doesn't erase the 'DEI' comment in the memo. If that weren't there, we might actually be having a discussion about the merits of one font vs. another.

> It isn't in fact about "sticking it to the woke"

Again, that might be believable if the memo hadn't explicitly complained about DEI.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#554

Post by Cthulhu_ »

LucasFonts wrote: post #475

Our studio, LucasFonts, designed Calibri. Here are our CEO Luc(as) de Groot’s thoughts on the matter: The decision to abandon Calibri on the grounds of it being a so-called “wasteful diversity font” is both amusing and regrettable. Calibri was specifically designed to enhance readability on modern computer screens and was selected by Microsoft in 2007 to replace Times New Roman as the default font in the Office suite…

I bet they want to get rid of Calibri because it was designed by a Dutch person. There's only two things I hate in this world, people who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch.

(disclaimer: I am Dutch).

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#557

Post by rtkwe »

tommica wrote: post #397
Fnoord wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For aesthetic or other preferences you change the default font to whatever you please. The default font shouldn't be about aesthetics, it should be first and foremost about usability. Especially on printed media since there it cannot be changed in a whim. A couple of years ago I went into archives of Dutch newspapers to learn whether and how the famine of hunger in Ukraine (known as Holodomor) was reported back in 19…

> The default font shouldn't be about aesthetics, it should be first and foremost about usability. The thing about usability is that it's both objective and subjective, and one can argue that aesthetics is part of usability. For example, I find writing code much more pleasant with Comic Code font, and I can imagine that there are other people that would hate it.

Sure but I think we could agree it looking nice ranks lower than being structurally more difficult to read for people? If there were a freely preinstalled option that was both sure but given the choice between functional and aesthetic readability wins hands down.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#559

Post by spicymaki »

croes wrote: post #524
klez wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point being that if the change to Calibri has been done to improve accessibility (hence: inclusion) that makes it woke. Which is stupid, of course, especially considering that sans-serif fonts improve readability on screens for most people, not for a minority. EDIT: extraneous "don't" in the middle of a sentence

Many things labeled as woke benefit the masses like environmental protection. I guess people like to stay asleep. Will be a rough awakening

> Will be a rough awakening

I used to believe that people would wake up, but that does not seem to be what happens. They are just herded around by the next dog that comes along.

Re: Rubio stages font coup: Times New Roman ousts Calibri

#560

Post by JetSetWilly »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #553
JetSetWilly wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're just falling into the sort of left wing "people who disagree with me can only do so because they are a bad person" trap. You can read the full text of the actual memo (and a reasonable interpretation of it) below, but it appears to me that the principle reason as stated is that Calibri is less professional, inconsistent with all other government communications and even inconsistent letterheads on the very…

> No, you're just falling into the sort of left wing "people who disagree with me can only do so because they are a bad person" trap. I'm not sure where this conclusion came from. I even acknowledged that the original change was problematic. > the principle reason as stated is that Calibri is less professional That's fair, but it doesn't erase the 'DEI' comment in the memo. If that weren't there, we might actually be…

DEI was mentioned in a footnote, it didn't seem to be the main thrust of the memo. I agree it would have been better to not mention it at all, the decision is perfectly defensible on the basis of all the previous non-footnoted points.

I apologise for my first comment, it seems like those critical of the latest decision are painting a simplistic picture - "this was one side attempting to be kind vs other side deliberately being unkind". But it doesn't appear to be the case to me.

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