Typography experts dismiss Times New Roman as ‘lazy’
A typography expert has lashed out at the ubiquity of Times New Roman, the font used by The Times newspaper, iPhones and default on Microsoft Word, by claiming that its very popularity has diminished its appeal.
Brian Hoff of Brian Hoff Design was amongst those to lay into the unassuming print style, warning oblivious users that “It’s telegraphing that you didn’t put any thought into the typeface that you selected”. Hoff went onto liken its use to ‘putting on sweatpants’.
Hoff made the remarks after speaking to Bloomberg about the suitability, or otherwise, of various fonts for CV’s but his sentiments were shared widely within the profession.
Whilst admitting that the font was ‘beautiful’ Paul Luna, graphic communication expert at the University of Reading, said: “I have a problem with the fact that we don’t need to think about what we write as long as we have a magic bullet of the typeface to sort it all out,” he said.
“There’s some truth in the fact that for 20 or 30 years it was the default typeface on Macs and PCs. It’s been used rather more lazily in all sorts of documents which might or might not be appropriate.”
Designed by Stanley Morrison for The Times in 1932 the font remained in use at the paper until 1972 and was the default typeface in computing for decades.