By default, Calibri worked with lining figures with uniform characters, although users can enable old-style figures in Word.Ĭalibri came to millions of PCs with the release of Office 2007, succeeding the staid 20th-century serif font Times New Roman. It wasn't until a few years later that he learned it would become the default in Office, which has 1.2 billion users. At first he heard it would be included in a programming environment. Once he sent over Calibri, he didn't know how it would be used. But then Microsoft employees said that it related to calibrating the rasterizer in the company's ClearType font rendering system. It was similar to Colibri, a genus of hummingbirds. The company came up with the name 'Calibri,' and when de Groot first heard it, he found it odd. Then I proposed Curva or Curvae, which I still like, but then the Cyrillic advisor said it meant 'prostitute' in Russian, it is indeed used as a very common curse word.' Microsoft legal workers also checked each possible name to see if it had already been trademarked. For both of his fonts, Microsoft wanted names that started with the letter C.Īs de Groot put it in an email, 'I had proposed Clas, a Scandinavian first name and associated with 'class,' but then the Greek advisor said it meant 'to fart' in Greek. The client turned out to be Microsoft, which accepted both of his proposals, and in 2003 de Groot traveled to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, to meet with designers, advisors and members of the company's typography team.Ĭoming up with the name was not easy. He was also asked to come up with a sans serif font, and so he sent off some sketches for Calibri in addition to the monospace work. He was not informed that the client had also sought proposals from other people.

An intermediary had asked him to come up with a proposal for a monospace typeface for an unnamed client. He figured the choice to change was more about keeping up with contemporary style trends than about improving the legibility of Calibri.ĭe Groot began working on Calibri in 2002. He said he did not expect to be consulted about the decision and that he's glad Microsoft invests in new fonts to make its software more valuable. 'I had not expected it to kind of be replaced already,' he said during a video interview from his home in Berlin. But Lucas de Groot, known professionally as Luc(as) de Groot, the Dutch type designer behind Calibri, was caught by surprise.

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