Aptos, originally named Bierstadt, is a

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif (), gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than ...

typeface A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...

in the neo-grotesque style developed by

Steve Matteson Steven R. Matteson (born 1965) is an American typeface designer whose work is included in several computer operating systems and embedded in game consoles, cell phones and other electronic devices. He is the designer of the Microsoft font family ...

. In 2023, it became the new default font for the

Microsoft Office Microsoft Office, MS Office, or simply Office, is an office suite and family of client software, server software, and services developed by Microsoft. The first version of the Office suite, announced by Bill Gates on August 1, 1988, at CO ...

suite, replacing the previously used

Calibri Calibri () is a digital sans-serif typeface family in the humanist or modern style. It was designed by Luc(as) de Groot in 2002–2004 and released to the general public in 2006, with Windows Vista. In Microsoft Office 2007, it replaced Time ...

font. Aptos, as well as its variants, Aptos Display, Aptos Narrow, Aptos Mono (a

monospaced font A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with Typeface#Proportion, variable-width fonts, where t ...

), and Aptos Serif (

serif font In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...

) are available to

Microsoft 365 Microsoft 365 (previously called Office 365) is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and Cloud computing, cloud-based Software as a service, services owned by Microsoft. It encompasses online services such as Outlook.com, One ...

subscribers via Microsoft's cloud service.

Characteristics

Aptos is available in the following styles: Light, Light Italic, Regular, Italic, Semibold, Semibold Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Extrabold, Extrabold Italic, Black, and Black Italic. The typeface has several distinct characteristics which make the typeface easily readable. * It has horizontal and vertical stroke endings based on

Helvetica Helvetica, also known by its original name Neue Haas Grotesk, is a widely-used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the f ...

as opposed to the slanted stroke ending of

Arial Arial is a sans-serif typeface in the Sans-serif#Neo-grotesque, neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows after Windows 3.1, as well as in other Microsoft programs, Apple's macOS, and ma ...

. * It removed the distinctive tail of the lowercase letter "a" and added it to the lowercase letter "l" (L), as in the lowercase letter "t", which prevents confusion with the uppercase letter "I" (i). * The shapes of the uppercase letters in "O" and "R" and the lowercase letter "a" are slightly irregular. * It has a double-story lowercase letter "g" with an angled stem instead of the single-story letter, as in Helvetica, and the uppercase letter "G" is rounded and has no

spur A spur is a metal tool designed to be worn in pairs on the heels of riding boots for the purpose of directing a horse or other animal to move forward or laterally while riding. It is usually used to refine the riding aids (commands) and to ba ...

. * Little swing tail of uppercase letter "R". * Lowercase letters "b", "c", and "p" and the uppercase letter "C" have wide contours. * It has circular dot in punctuations,

diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

, and

tittles The tittle or superscript dot is the dot on top of lowercase ''i'' and ''j''. In English writing the tittle is a diacritic which only appears as part of these glyphs, but dot (diacritic), diacritic dots can appear over other letters in various l ...

in lowercase letters "i" and "j" as opposed to the square dots in Arial and Helvetica. * The curved top flag of the numeral "1" is based on Arial. * Slanted stem of the numeral "7". * The curved tail of the uppercase letter "Q" meets its counter. Aptos includes characters from Latin,

Latin script in Unicode Over a thousand characters from the Latin script are encoded in the Unicode Standard, grouped in several basic and extended Latin blocks. The extended ranges contain mainly precomposed letters plus diacritics that are equivalently encoded with c ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, and

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...

. The

Italic type In typography, italic type is a cursive font based on a stylised form of calligraphic handwriting. Along with blackletter and roman type, it served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography. Owing to the influence f ...

of Aptos have been individually redrawn, rather than mechanically slanted. The italic does not have cursive forms except Cyrillic scripts, where the letter shapes are

oblique Oblique may refer to: * an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / ) *Oblique angle, in geometry * Oblique triangle, in geometry * Oblique lattice, in geometry * Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the ...

forms of the upright letters, as opposed to the true italic form of Calibri.

History

Aptos was originally named Bierstadt, after Mount Bierstadt of the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in great-circle distance, straight-line distance from the northernmost part of Western Can ...

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

. It is based on typical Swiss fonts from the middle of the 20th century. The font was intended to evoke a sense of the Helvetica and Arial fonts. It was introduced in 2021 alongside four other fonts (Grandview, Seaford, Skeena and Tenorite) for the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 applications. As a result, Bierstadt was considered a potential successor to the Microsoft Office standard font Calibri. In July 2023, Microsoft announced that Bierstadt would succeed Calibri, although it would have slightly modified

kerning In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between Character (symbol), characters in a Typeface#Proportion, proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual le ...

and leading and was renamed after

Aptos, California Aptos (Ohlone for "The People") is an unincorporated town in Santa Cruz County, California, United States. The town is made up of several small villages, which together form Aptos: Aptos Hills-Larkin Valley, Aptos Village, Cabrillo, Seacliff, ...

. It has been argued that Calibri had a "friendly" feeling that could skew writer intent, whereas Aptos could display a writer's words in a "clear and neutral" tone.

Availability

Aptos, Aptos Display, Aptos Narrow, Aptos Mono, and Aptos Serif, along with the original Bierstadt, Grandview, Seaford, Skeena and Tenorite are available to

subscribers via Microsoft's cloud service. A locally installed version of Aptos is also available from Microsoft.

References

{{Microsoft Windows Typefaces Microsoft typefaces Typefaces designed by Steve Matteson Grotesque sans-serif typefaces Neo-grotesque sans-serif typefaces