Fifteen years later, Microsoft has set a new default font for Microsoft 365.
After fifteen years of Calibri, it’s time for something different, according to Microsoft. It’s called the new default font for Microsoft 365 Aptos. Users all over the world will see these appear in the coming months.
The end of the era
When a font becomes news, you know it’s about an icon somewhere. For fifteen years, every Microsoft 365 user has grown accustomed to seeing Calibri as the primary option. A font so plain it wasn’t modified very often.
But with technical advances also come changes that you may not immediately think of at first. Higher resolution screens, for example, require a sharper, clearer font.
Two years ago, Microsoft launched Five new lines: Bierstadt, Grandview, Seaford, Schina and Tenoret. They were added to the dropdown list and Microsoft collected user feedback for two years. It turned out that Bierstadt was a favourite. To complete the change, this font will now also receive a new name with Aptos. Two years ago we described Bierstadt as “rational and meticulous”.
Aptos Design comes from Specialist Steve Matteson. He renamed Bierstadt Aptos after his favorite community in Santa Cruz, California.
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Calibri is the best, but not quite
Aptos will now appear as the default font in Word, Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel for several hundred million users and over the coming months for everyone. It remains to be seen if this also applies to the cheaper version of Microsoft 365 for Windows 11 in the near future, which Microsoft is said to be working on.
The new font is “sans serif” which means that there are no horizontal crossbars anywhere at the ends of the letters. Those who want of course can continue to use Calibri, the font does not disappear from the selection menu, just like the newcomers Grandview, Seaford, Skeena and Tenorite. You can always set a different font as the default font in Microsoft 365, if you want.
Font choice is ultimately personal, according to Microsoft and rightly so. It is also an important part of text design. Anyone who knows online hate Comic Sans knows what we’re talking about.
