Comment by pc86
3 years ago
This 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.
Calibri 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.
Can 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.
Everyone at the State Department is using Word. Word includes Calibri. That's literally the only thing he's concerned about.