Microsoft to Choose New Default Font to Replace Calibri
John Savard
Posts: 1,135
Microsoft is presenting five candidates for its new default font, to replace Calibri.
One of them is Skeena, among the designers of which is our own John Hudson.
In my opinion, though, the only candidates that have a chance are Tenorite and maybe Seaford. Bierstadt is too bold, and Grandview is too DIN-like. As for Skeena? All the candidates are sans-serif. Seaford is apparently not quite a monoline face, but Skeena is very definitely not monoline; it's also in the semi-bold category. So, while it is a beautiful face, I doubt it can be a default.
These five typefaces are already available within Office 365.
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Skeena would be my candidate ! It has something of the freshness of my beloved "Brusseline" used in Brussel's metro. And i guess it's even more elegant and more readable on text !
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I prefer Skeena personally myself. But for a default font, I fear that bland and inoffensive is what will win - for perfectly understandable reasons.
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Skeena is my favorite of the bunch as well, because it's the most readable (although it would be even more readable spaced more tightly). But the delusion of putting this to vote sours the whole thing for me. As if reading is entertainment.
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I feel quite at home with Skeena as well. I prefer the modulation and the terminals.
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As much as I applaud MS for making such a process more transparent, open and iterative, I feel neither of the fonts really feels Microsoft (brand) nor default (UI). I’d be curious was this an after-the-fact brief for making a potential new “default font” or was this the creative ghoal from the get go for all those fonts? It feels like MS is pinning different styles against one another, instead of synthesizing something that's truly encapsulating what they feel their OS should be.
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Indeed the ClearType collection was much more... clear-headed. Coupled with the fact that they're making all these ostensibly competing typefaces available anyway, it makes me think that the "transparency" is actually part of the populist marketing gimmickry. Somewhat parallel to the desperation of making a branding font freely usable by anybody.0
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I’d be curious was this an after-the-fact brief for making a potential new “default font” or was this the creative goal from the get go for all those fonts?The brief was to create new sans serif families for Office, with the possibility that one of them might eventually replace Calibri as the default font for new documents (i.e. new documents that don’t use a template that involves different fonts). So while the possibility of replacing Calibri was there are the beginning, it wasn’t the brief per se—at least, @Paul Hanslow and I didn’t treat it as such: we concentrated on extending the typographic palette for Office users in a new direction, giving them something they didn’t already have.It feels like MS is pinning different styles against one another, instead of synthesizing something that's truly encapsulating what they feel their OS should be.Note: this is for Office, not for the OS.10
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John Hudson said:Note: this is for Office, not for the OS.I'm not so sure about that. From the Microsoft page I referenced, it appears that just as it is Calibri instead of Times Roman that comes up by default in WordPad in the operating system, the successor to Calibri, chosen from these typefaces, currently only available in Office, will be there as well.1
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Multiple ones (especially assuming the various design teams were not consulting with each other) is what leaves a bad taste in the mouth.John Hudson
The brief was to create new sans serif families for Office
True, but it's *MS* Office. And arguably the default font in Office gets way more mindshare than the OS typeface. Noting how people have come to love to hate Calibri, not Segoe (or whatever, I'm not even sure, which is telling here).John Hudson
this is for Office, not for the OS.0 -
WordPad began life a stripped down version of Word (hence the name), so while it ships with the OS it takes its cues from Word.
Yes, eventually it is likely that some of the new fonts will ship bundled with either or both Office and Windows (at the moment they are only available via the Office cloud font service), but Johannes was talking about Microsoft brand and ‘encapsulating what they feel their OS should be’—and the new Office fonts are really not that: they are document fonts for users, not branding fonts for Windows.3 -
John Hudson said:and the new Office fonts are really not that: they are document fonts for users, not branding fonts for Windows.That's certainly true enough.Just because users know Calibri by name, while the font used below icons and in menus and so on is not normally seen by its name (although if you delve into Personalizations, no doubt you will see its name and be able to pick another one...)1
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That distinction is generally cogent, but in the case of MS, whose primary user mindshare is Office it's more hypothetical than real. When you see Calibri virtually every time you run MS software, Calibri comes to represent MS, more than whatever font they use for branding. In a way it's difficult for MS to brand itself with type.John Hudson said:the new Office fonts are really not that: they are document fonts for users, not branding fonts for Windows.
An interesting comparison here is IBM Plex, which is supposed to straddle branding and usage, but because IBM doesn't make dominant authoring software for end-users it cannot work, and simply ends up eroding the typographic branding potential (with very little benefit).2 -
Congratulations to Mr Hudson on a well-deserved accolade. I'm proud to be on a forum where a craftsman of his caliber comments.
Perhaps Microsoft will choose to replace their serif default font for MS Office before too long. If they have any sense, they'll look at New York, the abomination that Apple paid actual money for, then turn around by 180 degrees, and look for a replacement in that direction.
Or maybe somebody at Microsoft will choose to drop by this forum, and stop for a second to think about all the imaginative, talented folks who come to showcase their work here.3 -
Hi everyone, answering a few questions here.
The exercise is to set the direction for the next Office default type system. This is not a Microsoft brand or UI font, and although the typefaces need to live alongside UI fonts and branding fonts, Office is cross-platform and we obviously can't influence Apple and Android UI fonts.
We've not made any statements about shipping these with Windows - but we're keeping them cloud-only (aka.ms/officefonts) at least until we pick the direction and finalize the work.
Once we select the direction there will be lots of updates and changes, and additional styles will be commissioned so that it will shine in all our apps at all our end points. That's why we've given ourselves a year and a half to get that done.
So we're encouraging folks to let us know which they prefer but also things they don't like. Customer sentiment is just one of the inputs into the decision, but we are learning a lot, especially about things that people care about - dyslexia, accessibility, l and I differentiation, the names - so also opportunities for educational material when we announce the results.
Given the positive reaction I'm also hopeful that we'll be able to do work across all five families not just the one we pick. Re serif, I asked all of the designers to propose serif and monospaced companions, so hopefully a roadmap for that too.
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Awesome.SiDaniels said:I asked all of the designers to propose serif and monospaced companions, so hopefully a roadmap for that too.2 -
They are all pretty bland, but the one with the most pleasing character (or should that be characters) is Skeena in my opinion.
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I've found more extensive specimens of these five typefaces here:
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In a way it's difficult for MS to brand itself with type.Segoe has been central to the branding of Microsoft in general and Windows in particular for almost 20 years. It is everywhere in Microsoft branding and user experience, and used with great consistency and according to brand guidelines. Far from being difficult for Microsoft to brand itself with type, it has been so successful in branding itself with Segoe that replacing that typeface in the UI would be significantly difficult without also rebranding the company.
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Bierstadt is German for 'beer town.' Shouldn't that name go to a custom cut of Comic Sans for some party-all-night-long frat house at Florida State? Maybe Microsoft can come up with a replacement name with wider appeal. Though I like the new font, I'll never use anything named Beer Town in anything other than a party flyer. Just sayin.2
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konrad ritter said:Bierstadt is German for 'beer town.' Shouldn't that name go to a custom cut of Comic Sans for some party-all-night-long frat house at Florida State? Maybe Microsoft can come up with a replacement name with wider appeal. Though I like the new font, I'll never use anything named Beer Town in anything other than a party flyer. Just sayin.As it happens, the designer has said a few words about the typeface on the Microsoft page. The name is taken from a high mountain in his state of Colorado, because Switzerland, the country from which he took design inspiration, is mountainous.Of course, while Germany is famous for Oktoberfest, Switzerland is more famous for its milk.
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So, then, it should be Milchstadt. ;-)
There are many name places and mountains to choose from. Must is be a name that evokes a keg stand scene in Animal House 2: Beer Me, Bro!?0 -
In theory. In practice Segoe is such a generic humanist sans (to the point of eliciting a lawsuit threat, remember?) that it's difficult to brand with... which might be why MS chose it, because it knows the Office default font has more mindshare anyway.John Hudson said:
Segoe has been central to the branding of Microsoft in general and Windows in particular for almost 20 years.
Disagree. Branding relies mostly on display typography.John Hudson said:
replacing that typeface in the UI would be significantly difficult without also rebranding the company.
When Calibri gets replaced, people will notice that way more than a UI font changing.0 -
Thank you Konrad, ultimately if the names for any of these fonts are a blocker then we can rename them. We're hoping people express their opinions on the fonts themselves as well as the names.
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Thanks, Mr Daniels. My own opinion is of no importance, of course. And, I do like the font. I just think that names are fungible -- they're purely conventional labels -- so you might as well choose a label that helps the product.0
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Simon, maybe MS could provide more detailed samples. Tenorite, for example, seems not kerned in T/e, but from only half a line of text, no conclusion is reliable. I know the fonts are already available for 365 users, but if MS wants to also hear other users, more samples would be very helpful.
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Mount Bierstadt in Colorado is, no doubt, named after the painter Albert Bierstadt. There are many other mountains in that state; so I suppose Sneffels or Uncompaghre are also possibilities.
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I have no doubt that Steve named it after Mount Bierstdat. He loves the Colorado mountains.John Savard said:Mount Bierstadt in Colorado is, no doubt, named after the painter Albert Bierstadt. There are many other mountains in that state; so I suppose Sneffels or Uncompaghre are also possibilities.
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I was curious to have a look at these, but they're not showing up in my office 365 applications. Is it possible this is a windows-only thing?John Savard said:These five typefaces are already available within Office 365.0 -
André G. Isaak said:I was curious to have a look at these, but they're not showing up in my office 365 applications. Is it possible this is a windows-only thing?
I remember seeing a chart that shows that, yes, there are variations in font availability on different platforms. But they should be available in Word on nearly all the platforms.
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You may need to adjust some settings in order to activate fonts from the Office cloud font service:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/cloud-fonts-in-office-f7b009fe-037f-45ed-a556-b5fe6ede6adb
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