The Scoop: The complicated politics of choosing a State Department font

The State Department is doing an about-face on its standard typeface by reinstituting Times New Roman as its official font, abandoning a Biden-era directive that made Calibri the font of choice. 

The 2023 move to the sans serif font was applauded by accessibility advocates as making it easier for people with various eye conditions, dyslexia and other processing disorders to read official documents. 

“It’s difficult to say one typeface definitely helps with accessibility,” Sofie Beier, a type designer and professor at the Royal Danish Academy, told the New York Times. “But when we’re talking about these two specific typefaces, I would definitely say that Calibri meets the needs of accessibility more than Times New Roman.” 

Now, the Trump administration says that nod to accessibility is “wasteful.” 

“Switching to Calibri achieved nothing except the degradation of the department’s official correspondence,” wrote Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a memo entitled “Return to Tradition: Times New Roman 14-Point Font Required for All Department Paper.” The directive also called Calibri too casual and declared that it did not, in fact, address accessibility concerns.  

Designers generally agree that a serifed font conveys more authority and perceived heft than a sans serif.  

“I think there is enough evidence that says that serif fonts are taken more seriously than sans serif fonts in printed material,” Sam Berlow, co-founder of The Readability Consortium, told the Times. “There’s a sort of an authority that hangs on a serif font because of its place in newspapers.” 

Why it matters: There are two communications stories occurring simultaneously. 

One is the choice of fonts. The other is the communication of values. 

Fonts are a vital part of any style guide. They can change the entire tone of a piece of writing. You wouldn’t want a funeral announcement written in the casual, handwriting-like Comic Sans font, but you also likely wouldn’t want a children’s birthday announcement in a bland Arial. The very shape of the letters can be a key part of shaping a message, as we can see from how seriously both the Biden and the Trump administration have taken this choice of font. 

But the way each government told workers about the font change matters too. 

The Biden administration couched the switch to Calibri as a move to “a more accessible workplace.” However, the Rubio memo decries accessibility programs in general even as it claims the initiative failed to achieve its stated goals. “So, to restore decorum and professionalism to the Department’s written work products and abolish yet another wasteful DEIA program, the Department is returning to Times New Roman as its standard typeface,” the memo concludes.  

The memo focuses heavily on tradition, dignity and the solemnity of text, underscoring a broader administrative move back to classical values.  

The font is just another front in an ongoing war over how a government should communicate with its people in every way imaginable.  

Editor’s Top Reads: 

• Corporate America is in love with the term “storyteller.” The Wall Street Journal reports that LinkedIn job postings including the term “storyteller” more than doubled in the last year, including 50,000 marketing roles and 20,000 media and communications roles. The organizations seeking these storytellers is broad, too, ranging from USAA to the National Wild Turkey Federation. The reason is that storytelling is a broad, flexible term that can incorporate a wide variety of different content types beyond just the written word. Jennifer Kuperman, chief corporate affairs officer for Chime, said that titles like “editorial” are limiting. “They put in mind a very specific thing you’re doing or creating. Whereas you could tell stories in so many different ways — social, podcasts, putting your executives out there, hosting an event, talking to the press.” Communicators have been calling themselves storytellers for years, but now the term is seeing a broader shift in the business world. By continuing to emphasize their skill sets at reaching audiences in personalized, empathetic ways, communicators can shine in this moment when slop threatens to overtake the world.  

• Speaking of the human touch versus AI, a new Deloitte study found that when it comes to investment in artificial intelligence, 93% of funding is going to technology and only 7% toward the people who will actually use that tech. That split has real consequences. Research shows that AI use actually declined 15% in Q3, and 43% of workers say they’ve bypassed employer safety measures to use their own tools in unauthorized ways. By failing to communicate regularly and clearly with employees and to invest in training, companies risk building robust AI systems that aren’t used effectively. Communicators must be on the vanguard of this seismic shift, reminding leadership at every turn that technology is only as good as its users. 

• Every person under the age of 16 in Australia is now banned from using social media. In theory. CNN reports that kids are having no trouble bypassing the first-in-the-world social media ban down under. “None of my accounts on any platform has been shut down, not even the ones that I put my real age,” said one 15-year-old who uses social media to promote her singing. She added: “I’m pretty surprised, to be honest, because they made such a big deal about it. I think if you make such a big deal about something, you need to go through with it.” While it’s possible controls will kick in soon that truly prevent kids from using social media, in the meantime, this is a blow to the law as a whole. If Australia fails in its enforcement of this law, we may see support for it falter around the globe. Brands need to stay aware of these developments and keep in mind their own requirements for following the law and finding avenues outside of social media for reaching young audiences.  

Allison Carter is editorial director of PR Daily and Ragan.com. Follow her on LinkedIn.