From Aptos to Helvetica—here’s how fonts get their unusual names

Naming a font is not unlike naming a child. It requires equal parts strategy and intuition.

Earlier this month, Microsoft surprised the design community (and anyone who pays attention to the font they’re using in Word) with a new default font. Out with Calibri, in with Aptos. Except Aptos isn’t a new font; it’s a new name for an old font, called Bierstadt, which had been in Microsoft’s library for the past two years but apparently wasn’t being taken seriously. Same book, different cover.

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