Kicker: Serious business

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NICK EICHER, HOST: You do not have to be a type geek to know Times New Roman.

You may not know the technical term—a serif typeface—but you know it when you see it. It is the font of term papers, office memos, and court filings. It’s familiar. Traditional. Official.

So when the State Department this month quietly returned American diplomacy back to Times New Roman, some framed it as more than a design tweak. Secretary of State Marco Rubio scrapped a Biden-era shift to a modern sans-serif font, calling the change wasteful and politically correct. And casting the return as part of a broader move away from diversity initiatives.

The argument was about aesthetics. But it was also about symbolism: modern versus traditional. Trendy versus old-school.

Well, now old-school is trendy again.

Suggesting that when institutions want to be taken seriously—they still reach for what looks serious.

It’s The World and Everything in It.

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