It seems that all companies have agreed to make variations to their applications, the other days we knew about the facelift and new features coming to the new version of Thunderbird and now the Redmond giant, Microsoft, reveals that Calibri after 15 years, will no longer be the default font for their applications and will be replaced by Aptos.
This typeface, formerly known as Bierstadt, was designed by Steve Matteson. It is a sans serif font inspired by the Swiss typefaces of the middle of the last century, has a more universal and less mechanical appearance and is characterized by its sharpness, uniformity and legibility. In general, it is presented in clean, defined geometric shapes. In short: an optimal choice for on-screen viewing.
One of its key features is that it offers numerous font and language weights, the lowercase letter “l” now has a distinctive tail that differentiates it from the capital “I”, aiding identification, the heads of the letters “i” and “j” are circular dots rather than grotesque squares, and the number 6 has a single stroke while the number 8 is composed of two stacked ellipses.
Perhaps because of all this, from now on Aptos will be the default font in Word, Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel, and will be gradually implemented in all Microsoft 365 products.
It is no coincidence that Microsoft made this change, it is part of the company’s efforts to make its product more attractive and inclusive. Along with Aptos, they have introduced other new features to the user experience such as the selection of fonts, themes, colors and backgrounds for Microsoft 365.
So that the goodbye is not a goodbye: Calibri will continue to be available, just like its predecessors Times New Roman and Arial.
