Woke Fonts

You probably don't think very often about the art of typography, which deals with the style and appearance of printed matter. For someone like me, who appreciates the appearance and legibility of the printed word, it's very interesting, but not something I'd normally associate with the silly culture wars fanned by Der Furor and his followers ... but such is the time in which we live. 

Last week the State Department changed its policy on printed material to mandate use of the Times New Roman font for official documents. Times New Roman was the standard font used by the State Department from 2004* to 2023, when then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken directed a change to Calibri, considered more user-friendly for people with reading challenges and those who read documents online, thanks to its simpler shapes and wider spacing. Here's a side-by-side comparison of the two fonts:

I, myself, prefer Times New Roman as more official and elegant looking, and it's the font I use for documents I create myself, although I can see that Calibri could be easier for some people to read. 

As you might suspect, the change back to Times New Roman was couched in terms of the administration's rejection of what it believes are wasteful and inappropriate "DEIA" (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) influences and initiatives across government. This is, in my opinion, a silly reason to change fonts. If the goal is an official-looking font that's more legible and less simplistic than Calibri, perhaps Garamond might have been a better choice ...

Then again, given the frequently childish and silly actions of Der Furor and his administration, a change to Comic Sans might have been more appropriate ...

Another possible choice for an official font for this administration might have been Fraktur, which would excite the Neo-Nazi fever dreams of the farthest-right wing of the MAGA movement ...

Or, given the leanings of the recently-released National Security Strategy, we could just go directly to the Cyrillic font used for Russian -

Petulantly changing typefaces. The silliest manifestation of the culture wars to date. Sigh.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Before 2004, the standard font for the State Department was Courier New.