My spouse and I are as soon as once more rewatching “Mad Males,” a present that has, for higher or worse, lodged itself deep inside my persona. I can’t keep in mind the password to my checking account, or which of my child’s “Spirit Days” is subsequent Tuesday, however I can endlessly quote “Mad Males.”
We simply completed season one, which ends with “The Wheel.” You keep in mind it; the episode the place Don Draper pitches Kodak on a marketing campaign for his or her new slide projector. He muses on the Greek root of nostalgia whereas a carousel of his household pictures advances. It’s good tv.
However the scene I actually love comes a bit earlier within the episode. It’s late on the Sterling Cooper places of work and a tightie-whitie-clad Harry Crane clutches his trash can as he drones on concerning the cave work in Lascaux. Crane is corny and honest, and a too-drunk Don Draper can’t even faux to hear. Crane holds a hand as much as an imaginary cave wall and whispers that it’s as if the artists wished to say, “I used to be right here.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, just like the president he serves, appears equally decided to make his mark by throwing stuff on the wall. Rubio not too long ago made headlines for insisting that the State Division revert again to its use of Occasions New Roman as its default typeface, arguing that “constant formatting strengthens credibility and helps a unified Division identification.”
Rubio has additionally apparently claimed that Calibri, the typeface adopted by his predecessor, Antony Blinken, was simply “one other wasteful DEIA program.”
For these not well-versed within the politics of fonts — or, extra precisely, typefaces — they often fall into two buckets: Serifs are laced with the ornamental parts of lettering. Occasions New Roman is famously a serif typeface. Calibri is sans-serif, unadorned and understood to be extra accessible as a result of it was designed to be simpler to learn on laptop screens.
I’ll be part of Calibri’s designer, Lucas de Groot, in calling Rubio’s choice each “sad and hilarious.” It’s backwards and hateful for this administration to make such a choice out of spite.
However I’d wish to introduce one other layer to the dialog.
On the earth of design, and specifically of “branding,” any deliberate selection that departs from the default setting helps construct model worth. Emblem designers meticulously modify kerning, packaging designers obsess over shades of blue, inventive administrators insist that paperwork are constructed utilizing solely permitted templates. Whether or not these decisions ever make it to the shopper, they contribute to model fairness that tells staff, colleagues and finally customers one thing about what they’re making or promoting or constructing.
Each design program comes with its default settings. I not too long ago realized that Microsoft Phrase additionally shifted away from Calibri as its default typeface. However its choice was made for the other causes; Microsoft opted for an much more fashionable and bespoke sans-serif, Aptos, within the identify of accessibility and readability. (Bonus: Aptos is less complicated for AI to learn, too!)
In the meantime, the default typeface in Google Docs remains to be Arial, a sans-serif choice that’s a part of the aptly named “neo-grotesque” fashion and that I urge everybody to instantly override.
Within the early Thirties, a London newspaper upset the trade default by designing and adopting Occasions New Roman as its typeface, changing a much more flowery, serif-dripped predecessor. The intention was to modernize with a typeface that was simpler to print and simpler to learn, and so The Occasions made its choice to speak the kind of newspaper it supposed to be.
It’s necessary to do not forget that Occasions New Roman, or any typeface — or any inventive selection made by people! — will not be with out the context by which it was created. It didn’t simply fall out of a coconut tree, in any case. Regardless of it being boring and archaic now, Occasions New Roman and the selections that led it have been at one time thought of fashionable and ahead considering.
So what’s Secretary Rubio’s branding choice telling us concerning the State Division? That he’s plainly, I feel, attempting to undo — to revert. He desires to “Make America Nice Once more” in any case, and in doing so, rewind to a time when accessibility and readability wasn’t a precedence, earlier than governments thought of how speech-to-text software program may gain advantage these with disabilities.
In 2025 it will be good to have a authorities that prioritized its constituents. That didn’t need its diplomacy couched in serifs, or its places of work coated in cheesy gold leaf, simply because. However that’s not our authorities. And each choice they make, this time a deliberate one, tells us that.
Rubio might at the very least be applauded for making a choice. The world is brimming with AI-generated slop, and to any inventive that’s compelled to parse briefs written by robots, the default settings and lack of humanity are maddening. We’re starved for deliberacy. We relish a typo. Enjoyment of wabi-sabi! Give us the mark of an artist! We’re on the lookout for handprints.
Finally, I feel Marco Rubio is only a malicious narcissist. Like Harry Crane’s imagined cave painters in Lascaux, Rubio needs to convey “I used to be right here.” Maybe extra sinisterly, he’s attempting to undo the lengthy historical past of different individuals’s handprints, too. Don Draper could be horrified.
Lauren Kaelin is an artist, illustrator and designer dwelling in Brooklyn.
