After 15 years of loyal service, Calibri will give way to Aptos for the entire Microsoft Office suite.
For almost 15 years, users of the Office suite have had the honor and advantage - perhaps a little too much? - of having Calibri as their default font. However, this font has been in question for almost two years, since Microsoft presented a first selection of five fonts to replace it. At the time, the choice was between Bierstadt (designed by Steve Matteson), Grandview (designed by Aaron Bell), Seaford (designed by Tobias Frere-Jones, Nina Stössinger and Fred Shallcrass), Skeena (designed by John Hudson) and Tenorite (designed by Erin McLaughlin and Wei Huang). Five candidates, but there can only be one default font.
In a post on the official Microsoft blog, Si Daniels - one of the main programmers on the Office team - clarifies that the decision has been made and that it will finally be the font... Aptos that will take over from Calibri. An unknown font that has nothing to do with the five mentioned above? No, Aptos is simply the new name of Steve Matteson's Bierstadt. The font is reminiscent of mid-twentieth-century Swiss typography, and should quickly find its place in the Office suite. Si Daniels explains: " Today we're starting the final stage of this major change, which sees Aptos become the default font on Word, Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel for millions of users. "
It's worth noting that Steve Matteson is no stranger to creating a variety of fonts, and one of his works has already been chosen by Microsoft, since the Segoe font was used as the default font from Windows Vista onwards, and continues to be widely used today on Windows 11. Last but not least, Calibri will obviously not disappear: it will always be present in the font selection drop-down list, and will even be given a certain prominence since, like Arial and Times New Roman, it will be pinned to the very top of this list.
