It has been quite the week for fonts and fans of typography.
Government Abandons the Sans Serif Font (But Why?)
First, the U.S. Secretary of State changed the official font of all department communications back to Times Roman, reversing a change made by his predecessor two years earlier when they adopted the sans serif font Calibri for readability.
Calling the adoption of Calibri a “wasteful” diversity initiative, Marco Rubio reverted to the typeface that may have been the standard when he was in college. The move gives clear evidence that he hasn’t typed any of his own communications in more than a decade, given Microsoft abandoned Times Roman in favor of Calibri as the default for Microsoft Word in 2007. (Perhaps they should have just moved on to Aptos, which Microsoft adopted in 2023?)
I’m not sure what the selection of Times Roman says about the brand voice of the Department, but I certainly don’t expect it will have a significant impact on any of the foreign policy matters traditionally led by State.
Branding Font at the Army-Navy Game
Then the athletes participating in the Army-Navy football game took the field wearing uniforms honoring the 250-year U.S. history. Navy players wore helmets adorned with ships, but it was the Army uniforms that got my attention.
Upon first view I couldn’t help but wonder what crazy person selected the difficult-to-read font emblazoned across their shoulders, but then I looked it up. Some creative marketing pro elected to embrace the branding font family of the U.S. Constitution. Now that had me doing a double take.
See how the Army-Navy football game uniform reflects their brand identity.
Legibility issues? Yes. Non-traditional decision for an athletic uniform? Yep. Cool idea to celebrate an anniversary with text that most everybody already knows what it says? Absolutely!
Wow. Anybody, anyplace else choosing to co-opt this font for their purposes would have been inappropriate and borderline absurd. But for large point size uniform text intended to honor our history, this was a classy branding font decision that I can get behind. Kudos, Army!
This blog was contributed by Jennifer Koon, Principal of Michael Mackenzie Communications.