Calibri font, the Trump administration’s new villain

Calibri font will no longer be used in government documents under the Trump administration because it is a woke typeface. State Secretary Marco Rubio has ordered a change in the font used in official State Department (DOS) documents because he considers Calibri to be too informal, part of the previous administration’s efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, and “clashes” with the department’s official letterhead. so they will return to use Times New Roman, which will “restore decorum and professionalism to the department’s written work,” Rubio said in a memo, according to The New York Times.

Rubio’s move is the latest example of the Donald Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate any initiative it considers promotes diversity, equality and inclusion, known by its acronym, DEI, at the federal level. Some diplomats have expressed their dissatisfaction with the changes Rubio has made to the structure and leadership of the DOS. According to the Times, 98% of diplomats feel demoralized and ignored since Trump took office in January of this year.

From Courier New to Calibri

During Joe Biden’s term, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken ordered the change to be made in 2023, as Calibri does not use serifs—small embellishments or flourishes at the end of letter strokes—and is therefore considered softer and more accessible to people with vision problems or reading difficulties. For Rubio, this change only served to degrade the official correspondence of the State Department.

For 20 years, from 2003 until Blinken made the change, the U.S. government used Times New Roman as the official font for official documents. The serif typeface was created by Stanley Morison and designed by Victor Lardent in 1931 for the British newspaper The Times. In October 1932, the newspaper published its first edition using Times New Roman, and it became its official typeface until 1972.

Before 2003, the State Department used Courier New. The Courier typeface was used on IBM typewriters since the 1950s, but because the company was unable to secure the rights to the design, many other companies used it too, and it became the standard font for typewriters. This typeface is neither modern nor elegant, nor is it easy to read.

Dutch designer Lucas de Groot, director of the type foundry Frontfabric, a company that collaborates with brands such as Adobe and Canva, created Calibri for the Windows Vista operating system in 2006, and it quickly became the default font for Microsoft Office.

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