Question the defaults.

I really hate Calibri.

And until recently, I wasn’t quite sure why.

I mean, it’s not a terrible typeface. It’s a little bit ugly. Ultimately it’s a crap version of Arial, which in itself is a slightly crap version of Helvetica. But it’s not Comic Sans, is it? Why should I have such a visceral dislike of it?

I would find myself unable to take ideas seriously when written in Calibri (whether in Word or Power Point, it didn’t seem to matter). For some reason, it would often appear on very ugly Power Point slides where the text was badly placed and the slide layout defied easy communication.

It’s unfair to the ideas and those expressing them and I’m sorry.

But I think I have now discovered why I was reacting like that.

I’ve recently been enjoying “Rebel Ideas” by Matthew Syed, which has a load of interesting concepts and stories in it. If you haven’t read it, you should. Towards the end he mentions a study that discovered that people who use Chrome and Firefox browsers are more productive and more creative. This initially perplexed the researchers, as these browsers had no inherent functionality that might explain this effect. But the data was unequivocal, the differences too big to ignore.

The explanation wasn’t about the browsers, it was about the fact that these browsers were not the default.

To use Chrome or Firefox, you had to be looking at Internet Explorer, or Safari and thinking ‘I wonder if there is a better way?’.

Most people don’t do this.

The question never occurs to them.

They look at the world as it is and operate within it, in big and small ways. In ways that don’t really matter (like their choice of browser) but also ways that really do matter (like the political system or the reaction to climate change).

Most people don’t speculate and consider whether things could be different.

They accept the defaults.

There are some inspiring and poetic quotes about this.

Steve Jobs said “Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it…once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.”

In Adam Curtis’ masterful recent series Can’t get You Out Of My Head, he closes with this from David Graeber “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently.”

There’s an even simpler way to say this, which might just change the world if you apply it properly.

Question the defaults.

Spend time wondering why things are the way they are and how they could be different.

Change things and make them a little better.

Don’t accept what you’re told and the accepted wisdom until you understand it better.

Wonder why.

Why do I hate Calibri?

Because it’s the default.

By using it, you’re signalling that you might (not definitely, but might) be someone who hasn’t wondered if there might be a better typeface.

It’s a signal that you might be less creative, less interesting as a thinker.

Although I am willing to grudgingly accept that it might be that you just don’t care about typefaces.