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Microsoft is changing its default font for the first time in over 15 years. On Thursday, the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant revealed the name of its new typeface that will be familiar in Santa Cruz County: Aptos.
Microsoft wrote that the font was designed by Steve Matteson and named Aptos, “after his favorite unincorporated city of Santa Cruz, California, whose landscape and climate embody the variety of fonts”. Blog entry Thursday.
Aptos is an Ohlone word meaning “people”.
“The fog, the beaches, the redwoods, and the Aptos Mountains sum up everything I love about California,” Daniels, Microsoft’s Principal Program Manager, wrote in the post. “Going away from digital content and evoking external experiences was like going back to using paper and pencil. Handwritten messages play a major role in Steve’s creative process.”
Since 2007, Microsoft has used Calibri as the default font for Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and Outlook emails.
The company announced for the first time that it would replace the Calibri April 2021 He said he would choose from five new lines that had been commissioned for this purpose. At the time, Matteson named the line Bierstadt after a peak in Colorado where he lives. Its design competed with four other linear designs: Tenoret, Scina, Seaford, and Grandview.
According to Microsoft, Bierstadt (now Aptos) caused the biggest reaction. The font will be rolled out as the default font for hundreds of millions of Microsoft 365 users over the next few months.
When change comes The Aptos name competes with four others in a very different race in Santa Cruz County – renaming Cabrillo College.
On August 7, the Cabrillo College Board of Trustees will vote on the new name from among five options: Seacliff College, Costa Vista College, Coastal Santa Cruz College, Kagastaka College, and Aptos College.
The Community Task Force narrowed down the list of suggested names from about 350 to five options. A name proposal will be submitted to the board before the August meeting, but the board will ultimately decide on the new name.
According to Microsoft, Aptos is a sans font designed to be easy to read and contain simpler, less flowery characters. According to Microsoft, Aptos is designed with clean, different geometries to work in many different languages and to be easy to read on the smaller, high-resolution screens common in today’s electronic devices.
According to Microsoft, Matteson designed the font with a “slight human touch”.
“He wanted Aptos to have the universal appeal of the late NPR anchor Carl Cassel and the witty voice of The Late Show host Stephen Colbert,” wrote Daniels, Microsoft’s director of programming. Steve said the line has such a simple personality that it can’t be “overtly” neutral. There must be some warmth.”
“It’s like listening to a GPS voice versus a human voice,” Matteson told Microsoft. “People would rather listen to a human than a robot tell you to turn left, this is my soul that I put into the design.”
