5 ms·
I never understand why someone in charge of making one specific simple choice, ends up making a remarkable dumb decision. Why, unless you are doing things uneth
by okamiueru 4y ago
I never understand why someone in charge of making one specific simple choice, ends up making a remarkable dumb decision. Why, unless you are doing things unethically, would you go for a licensed font?
It's not like this is a hard problem to solve more than adequately with open and more accessible alternatives.
- ivraatiems 4y agoDo you think Anthony Blinken knows what a licensed or unlicensed font is?
- okamiueru 4y agoI would hope someone who don't know the context or effect of a choice they are making, at the least consults with someone who does? This isn't rocket science to get right.
- BitwiseFool 4y agoFont licensing is an incredibly niche thing to be aware of. I'm highly confident the people involved in this decision simply saw that Calibri was the default font in Microsoft Office and didn't think twice about the availability of it. Perhaps someone farther down the chain of command raised a concern about licensing, but I doubt such a concern would make its way back up the chain. It seems like something only lower level employees, graphic artists, or even IT administrators would be aware of. Anecdotally, the most pressing concern I made to management during my career only ever made its way up two levels in the corporate ladder, not including my manager. I have a feeling the State Department is even more rigid with communication flow.
- dredmorbius 4y agoIt could also be that Microsoft are acknowledging the dominance of mobile devices and that they, as well as State, are optimising for reading on mobile rather than desktop or printed output. This is amongst the few defensible rationales I can conceive of. The OCR argument offered in the Birdsite thread seems ... weak at best. (As I've noted in another comment.)
- pc86 4y agoThis is such a weird HN-style take. I would bet money the start of this selection was "give me a list of the fonts on all our computers right now" and then they picked one. Probably Calibri after seeing it as the default in some other application. Nobody at the State Department is diving into the intricacies of font licensure.
- okamiueru 4y agoCan you describe what "HN-style take" means to you? I'm saying that a decision should be made by weighing pros/cons by someone qualified to make them. If that's HN-y, then that sounds great. It doesn't sound like how you described this process is anything short of incompetence or "phoning it in". Which, I'm sure is a valid explanation for how they ended up deciding it. But, I'm using the word "dumb" in not a literal sense. It covers both incompetence and laziness. Also, if you are deciding on a font to be used widely. One of the key aspects is exactly the license. It describes the conditions for its use. If your job is to evaluate which fonts to use, and you don't consider the conditions for its use, then yes, you are incompetent in that decision. And its not "intricate", its the bare minimum expected.
- xxpor 4y agoEveryone at the State Department is using Word. Word includes Calibri. That's literally the only thing he's concerned about.
- int_19h 4y agoCalibri is the default font for new documents in Microsoft Office since Office 2007, when it first appeared. So they probably didn't even bother with browsing the choices, just documented what was the easiest for the users.
- nebulous1 4y agoDo you think that Anthony Blinken came up with the idea of using Calibri?
- D13Fd 4y agoI mean, that's not implausible. This sounds like exactly what would happen if one person had a specific font preference and happened to be in charge.
- quickthrowman 4y agoCalibri is the default MS Office font
- D13Fd 4y agoSo what?
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- js2 4y agoI happen to know this because it was a recent crossword puzzle answer, but it's Antony (no "h").
- chomp 4y agoLogistics probably. With out a doubt you know this font is deployed on most systems around the world. It’s maintained by one of the largest companies in the world. And its provenance can be assured.
- colinwilyb 4y agoNow I want to make a custom Times New Roman font with unpredictable ligatures and 0-width vector data so poorly monitored systems create false data when printed in hardcopy.
- Tsiklon 4y agoI’m reminded of the humorous screenshot quoting “Times New Bastard”
- mayormcmatt 4y agoJust looked this up: that's fantastic.
- l- 4y agohttps://www.1001fonts.com/toms-new-roman-font.html https://www.1001fonts.com/toms-new-roman-font.html
- JeremyBanks 4y ago[dead]
- maxk42 4y agoAside from licensing, usability studies show that serif fonts are more legible than sans serif fonts, so I have no idea where they came up with the idea that somehow they're harder to read for people with disabilities when all prior research I'm aware of has shown the opposite.
- steveridout 4y agoI thought the same thing. Surely it must be a function of the prevalence of these fonts though. In a hypothetical world where 90% of text you read is in sans serif I'd have to imagine that this would tilt the readability study results in sans serif's favor. I wonder if the studies attempt to control for this somehow?
- Poppys 4y agoI don't believe that is true anymore, I've seen studies that show that there is little difference between the two.
- int_19h 4y agoIt should be noted that older studies are all about paper and signs, while newer ones tend to focus on screens. There are some important differences between the two esp. when it comes to low-DPI screens (which are sadly still typical for office desktops).
- azalemeth 4y agoYes! This a thousand times. Many universities I know now discourage sans-serif fonts for screen reasons and prefer Arial because one study showed a slight preference for those who were dyslexic. The evidence is far from strong [1] and frankly I feel like doing a meta-analysis of it in my spare time. I really, really, really dislike Arial and find it harder to read than others. [1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=dyslexia%20arial%20font&btnG=Search&as_sdt=800000000001&as_sdtp=on https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=dyslexia%20arial%20font...
- jhanschoo 4y ago
- thrashh 4y agoYour average person doing office work already has access to the font. There’s nothing dumb about reading the room
- jonas21 4y agoIt's the default font in MS Office. If the State Department uses Office (and they almost certainly do), then it's an obvious choice.
- nayaketo 4y agoYeah, I was wondering if they finally upgraded computers with Win XP and Office 2003 (with default font Times New Roman) to Win 10/11 and Office 2021/Office 365 (with default font Calibri).
- rayiner 4y agoThe federal government is Microsoft Word all the way down. The relevant people have no idea what you’re talking about.
- rsfern 4y agoSome of us federal scientists use LaTeX! Have to use Word for internal documents (like proposals) that go to management though…