Despite being once a Microsoft default, how did it avoid fame or infamy?

Your average Calibri in use for any quick-and-easy signs/notices.

My Creative Monologue this time brings us to a quaint typeface ever so (not) dear to our hearts — Calibri. Is it too quirky? Is it too new? Or is it just not impressive? Here are my thoughts.

CALIBRI IS A SANS SERIF FONT that Microsoft has used as a default on their Office products, starting from the 2007 version. You may know it when you first type out your Word document without any text formatting. Unfortunately, Microsoft announced back in April last year that they are retiring Calibri from its default seat, with five new contenders contesting to take over the throne as the next new default font.

Throughout these fourteen years, Calibri came and went (a little more obscure in your Windows operating system) with little fanfare surrounding it. That is not the case for other default fonts that Microsoft has introduced in the past. If you have read a previous article I wrote about Times New Roman, you’d have known how it received contentious opinions due to its massive, accessible use in Microsoft Word. There was seemingly no neutral standpoint about this aged serif. Arial was brutally pitted against its older Helvetica counterpart. Even non-defaults like Comic Sans and Impact were abused by the hands of meme-makers, with the former by school teachers too. But Calibri suffered no similar extremes of glory, shame, or exploitation of such sort. As we explore the possible reasons why Calibri missed such outcomes, we shall also see what we can learn about font rationale and their reactions by the masses.

A closer look into the corners of a ‘v’ stroke in Calibri shows that it’s curved a little.

1) It’s too game-changing

Calibri, by Luc(as) De Groot, is part of the ClearType Font Collection that Microsoft debuted in its Windows Vista operating system. It’s meant to complement the ClearType technology that the company had created to render texts more smoothly on LCD screens, called subpixel rendering. By recognising the original use for Calibri, we can see why there may be a purpose for the subtly rounded ends this type has; to showcase how well the curves perform even under small point sizes that ClearType technology can afford to do.

Rounded fonts are typically associated with child-likeness. You can easily see the link when you notice how often alphabets on children’s toys are either rendered in Cooper Black, VAG Rounded, or Arial Rounded. Thus, it is even more surprising why De Groot would have even considered rounding the ends of Calibri to dangerously tread itself into kiddish territory as opposed to its professional use on emails.

But there’s a curveball. De Groot allowed Calibri’s terminals to not curve so much that it straddles the line between juvenile and adult. Only the corners are blunt by a bit, whereas the ends remain flat, something you’d see more of in the Grotesque category. Its type anatomy also belongs itself to the Humanist Sans kind, attaining stroke width variations ever so slightly to manifest as a new alternative to the 1990s creations, like FF Meta and FF Scala Sans.

With the small, currently renderable curves on a modern Humanist silhouette, Calibri presents itself as something formal yet a little casual that it doesn’t give typographers a well-founded reason to rope it with old typefaces, since it isn’t trying to mirror them. It nevertheless has inspirations from the past. It adorns a business look by making use of the double-storey ‘g’ and a calligraphy-inspired ‘f’ in its italic iteration. Calibri’s typographic style hence is neither here nor there genre-wise, or you can perhaps deem it as it’s trying to bear a new subset of typeface categories. Well, a subset that not the majority may like.

2) It didn’t have a fighting chance

With its ClearType-oriented, semi-roundness glory, Calibri is only known within the 21st century belonging to Microsoft Office. No one has witnessed this typeface being used in any other setting in the past since it didn’t exist back then. Typefaces like Impact and Cooper Black already gained traction in the pre-digital era’s public media. As such, it is not unfamiliar faces when Microsoft decidedly bought and brought them to consumers. People can also consider these fonts as safe choices to pick and use for personal projects since it has worked well commercially before.

Calibri didn’t have this opportunity to be “in use” (eg. adverts, movie posters) by design agencies before having been accustomed to the public eye. Even when it is being used thereafter, the majority of it is done by ordinary people who wanted a fuss-free way to place impromptu signs on A4 papers. With Calibri being the default font, it is almost without a doubt the font of choice (or rather non-choice) to use in makeshift signs. So, when people start to notice Calibri from such examples, a negative connotation has been formed; that it is a lazy response to creating quick, printed announcements.

With a debut that has no pre-usage in professional public media and is now blasted everywhere frugally on photocopy paper, Calibri didn’t have a fighting chance to be its best. It was portrayed as the worst when it’s easily accessible to everyone as a default in Microsoft products, which would’ve caused lacklustre reception to this font overall.

3) It’s not meme-worthy

Not that Calibri is never used as memes (cue the various font alignment charts that people have done), but the font itself just doesn’t make enough of an impact or context for it to be used as a go-to type for funny images all the time. And neither was that its intended use. Even if one were to unironically use the font on any memes, it wouldn’t do much to help support the joke as a typeface. Consider why other established fonts can do better.

Impact, a pretty self-explanatory font name, had itself a niche to fill in the 1960s when industrial-esque typefaces were roaring in the scene to grab readers left and right with one look. This so-called ethos made it easy for Impact to continue thriving in the late 90s to early 2000s when big red texts were in demand on comedy movie posters and billboards. As a result, Impact perhaps had an easier entryway to continue associating itself as something funny, even when it became outlined white texts for image macros of memes to proliferate throughout the internet around 2014 and onward.

Comic Sans, by Vincent Connare, is a rounded typeface in imitation of written letterings that became a standard in comic books back in the 1960s. It was included as a usable font in Windows operating system, starting from the 95 version. Bearing in mind that word processors and the world wide web were just becoming something easily accessible in common households back in the 1990s, Comic Sans was a reachable font to pick for one to quickly add fun to their prints and website. This was so prevalent that inexperienced people would just use Comic Sans to jazz up documents, even though it may not be the most suitable for use in professional settings.

This in turn brought notoriety to the typeface, which further evolved into ironic use when Doge, the meme-iest Shiba Inu, sent Comic Sans to new heights in 2013 as it depicts the dog speaking in broken English, with the font supporting how wacky and zany the speech is.

Calibri had no such long history, and it didn’t have anyone to translate the typeface into strong comedic use in recent times. But in my opinion, there is still a chance. With the typeface being used for generic makeshift signs so pervasively by people, there can come a time where someone could just use this typeface as a normal part of satire or ironic humour, and start a new humourous cycle for Calibri in use.

What is left of Calibri’s future?

When all is said and done, I was left wondering if, not only Calibri, but the entire ClearType collection of fonts have any long-lasting value. LCD screens have since been swapped out with OLED, which diminishes the need for any of these fonts to flex their subpixel-rendered glory. In fact, who was Microsoft trying to impress by showcasing smooth curves with…fonts? This was never a subject that any average person wanted answers to, or so I know of. And that too may be the reason why no one cared that much for Calibri or the other ClearType counterparts, since they addressed a situation that not the majority has asked to solve.

There are more new display typefaces in the market than ever today that continue to readily change our design environment and pop culture. They even channel the creative liberty that people desired back when Comic Sans was mostly the accessible choice of defining “fun” design. Calibri was fun as a curve-flexing business guru, but it didn’t truly match the demand that people have wanted all this time. But if you look at it another way, maybe that was a good thing. Maybe all Calibri wanted was to be a “very friendly” typeface that anyone can use and not think twice about whether it can either pass it off as too casual or too generic. It’s the new deliberate “auto-tuned” font for the layman that no one has seen coming. Perhaps, this is all rather an address to the subconscious demand.

Conclusion

It took years for typefaces to be established and well-used by typesetters for them to belong in the hearts of the public. Calibri hasn’t reached that stage just yet, but who knows things may change when we give that typeface to age for decades or more. It may end up a fine wine, or the worst, it could just end up rotting in people’s old, obsolete hard disks.

How about a multi-axis Calibri Variable, anyone?