Making America great again extends to the style of official communications — with US diplomats ordered to return to a Times New Roman typeface instead of Calibri.
Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, called his predecessor Antony Blinken’s move to adopt the modern, rounded sans-serif typeface a “wasteful” diversity move. The Biden administration said in 2023 that “fonts like Times New Roman have serifs (‘wings’ and ‘feet’) or decorative angular features that can introduce accessibility issues for individuals with disabilities” such as poor vision.
A cable sent by Rubio to all US diplomatic posts with the subject line “Return to Tradition: Times New Roman 14-Point Font Required for All Department Paper” said that typography shaped the professionalism of an official document and called Calibri too informal.
It marked the latest stage in President Trump’s campaign to purge the US federal government of diversity initiatives which has seen the scrapping of targets and accommodations for gender issues and ethnic-minority recruitment.
“To restore decorum and professionalism to the department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility] programme, the department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface,” the cable said.
“This formatting standard aligns with the president’s One Voice for America’s foreign relations directive, underscoring the department’s responsibility to present a unified, professional voice in all communications,” it added.
The State Department switched in January 2023 to Calibri, a modern sans-serif typeface, saying this was the default for Microsoft, which replaced Times New Roman in Windows Vista in 2007.
Times New Roman was designed for The Times in 1931 by Stanley Morison, who called it “English, direct, simple and free from frivolity”.
He added: “It is clear that it is a protection against fanaticism and fashion for The Times to place itself outside the stream of typographical experiment and novelty which is so absolutely vital to advertising and other exploitations of the invention of printing.”
The Times itself in 2023 lamented the State Department’s switch to “the round-edged upstart” Calibri as a “monstrous misjudgment”.
In an editorial, The Times called this “dumbing down” and added: “It is hardly surprising that Mr Blinken is happy to sacrifice typographical tradition on the altar of modernity. He is, after all, an American.”
It observed that Britain’s Supreme Court had also ditched Times New Roman for Calibri. “That the highest court in the land should have adopted a tacky American name for itself was bad enough. But to abandon Times New Roman? Is nothing sacred?” it concluded.
Asked what he had against Times New Roman after the change in January 2023, Blinken joked: “I’m always trying to be a font of wisdom.”