Microsoft Design
medium.com/microsoft-design · Company blog · on HN since 2016
Microsoft Design is a Medium publication where Microsoft designers write about typography, icons, emoji, accessibility, and product design.
What HN saysHN commenters link it for the leading-trim CSS typography article, the Office icon redesign, accessibility, and an essay defending the em dash.
50HN people shared it
13linked it in comments
42stories submitted
123story points
11 months agolast shared
2016people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Leading-Trim: The Future of Digital Typesetting9 people · 11 points · first shared 2020 · 1 comments on HN
- 2Redesigning the Office App Icons to Embrace a New World of Work3 people · 15 points · first shared 2018 · 1 comments on HN
- 3Microsoft Teams Redesigned3 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · 1 comments on HN
- 4We refreshed our 1800 emoji to support the new landscape of work2 people · 24 points · first shared 2021 · 4 comments on HN
- 5Kill Your Personas2 people · 9 points · first shared 2018 · 6 comments on HN
- 6Microsoft: Developing an Open Source Icon System2 people · 6 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 7If You Want to Be Creative Don't Be Data Driven2 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 8The Icon Kaleidoscope2 people · 2 points · first shared 2019 · discussion on HN
- 9Taking the Leap from 2D to 3D:Notes from my First year on the HoloLens design team2 people · 2 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 10Microsoft: Fluent UI2 people · 1 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 11Beyond calibri finding the next microsoft 365 default font 5ef83f028be22 people · first shared 2023
- 12Windows Icons Redesign1 people · 16 points · first shared 2020 · 4 comments on HN
- 13The Feelings Monster: building a character with all the feels1 people · 4 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 14A change of typeface: Microsoft’s new default font has arrived1 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 15The Future Vision of Microsoft 3651 people · 3 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
Capricorn2481 · 2025-12-05
Having an em dash is not "writing like AI." It's been around forever.
"The irony, of course, is that many of the people most convinced of the em dash’s inhumanity are least equipped to spot actual AI writing"
https://medium.com/microsoft-design/the-em-dash-conspiracy-how-pop-cul…
achow · 2020-10-28
The justification is spelled out literally few words down the line - to unify the visual language.
If that is not clear, here is an example of Microsoft Office's excellent execution: https://medium.com/microsoft-design/redesigning-the-office-app-icons-t…
KaiMagnus · 2024-04-18
I’d have liked a bit more on the visual (and subjective part, this is probably also there the issues lies, apart from bugs) alignment aspect. The first apple example seems pretty well centered to me for example.
I’d like to use system fonts more often, but apart from the vendor brand fonts like Segoe or San Francisco they are pretty terrible to use all around.
So choosing a custom font and fitting everything around it seems like the solution for now. Apart from that, I’d like to see more support for leading-trim, which will help make things better, at least on the web. https://medium.com/microsoft-design/leading-trim-the-future-of-digital…
alberth · 2024-02-02
Fonts
I really wish more effort was put into CSS typography.
In particular:
leading-trim margin-trim —-
https://medium.com/microsoft-design/leading-trim-the-future-of-digital…
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/margin-trim
pimlottc · 2023-10-24
Everybody needs accessibility features sometimes:
> Say you’re designing for someone with one arm. There are roughly 20,000 people in the US with one arm. But if you add up the numbers of people with one arm, people with a temporary wrist injury or a broken arm, and folks with one free hand in a specific circumstance (like new parents lugging a baby around), you’re at 20 million in the U.S. alone.
https://medium.com/microsoft-design/kill-your-personas-1c332d4908cc
rob74 · 2023-07-14
While the name Aptos is explained in the article, I was more curious about the previous name Bierstadt (because the font is "inspired by Swiss typography", but the Swiss are not especially famous for their beer), and I found it in https://medium.com/microsoft-design/beyond-calibri-finding-the-next-mi…
> As for the name, Bierstadt is named for one of Colorado’s 14,000-foot peaks. When I think of Swiss type, I think of the Alps, and since I’m based in Boulder, my Alps are the Rockies
So it was more of a multi-step reasoning: Switzerland -> Alps -> Mountains -> Rockies -> peak in the Rockies with German-sounding name -> Bierstadt.
troupo · 2023-07-14
The rationale is this: "we believe":
--- start quote ---
Calibri has been the default font for all things Microsoft 365 since 2007, when it stepped in to replace Times New Roman across Microsoft Office. It has served us all well, but we believe it’s time to evolve.
--- end quote ---
It's literally designers keeping their jobs by running in an endless hamster wheel.
Edit: to those downvoting. Read the articles. This is the entirety of their rationale over two articles. The quote above is from the article they linked as "Calibri has come its natural end": https://medium.com/microsoft-design/beyond-calibri-finding-the-next-mi…
saadat · 2022-05-29
The CSS property leading-trim [1][2] is designed to solve this alignment problem (among others). However, it's still at the Working Draft stage, so it's going to take a while before browsers start supporting it.
[1]: https://www.w3.org/TR/css-inline-3/#leading-trim
[2]: https://medium.com/microsoft-design/leading-trim-the-future-of-digital…
alphachloride · 2021-07-15
The actual reveal article by Microsoft:
https://medium.com/microsoft-design/emotionality-at-work-398182387adc
asoneth · 2021-01-25
I definitely agree with the sentiment.
Note that there has been debate in the field about the term "user" for decades. Some people object because it is ambiguous, some because it reduces people to their interaction with your software, others due to the connotation with drug use. (For example: https://medium.com/microsoft-design/we-have-customers-not-users-1f208f…
I've had people replace instances of one with the other in my documents, so I don't read too much into it these days.
ksec · 2023-05-26
I just look at some of their design for Teams [1], which is something I am forced to used everyday along with Outlook. They are finally ( at least I hope those are final design ) not taking away my vertical space with endless layers / rows of buttons. The absolute maximum I could take is three layers, as shown in the Excel screen shots.
I also cant remember the last time I was excited about design from Microsoft. May be it was Windows XP.
My only concern is Microsoft has a tradition of messing it up when they ship it. And in typical Microsoft tradition you are likely getting Fluent 2 on top of Fluent 1 and then Metro, Aero or even Win 95 design All in one. I just wish they could release a more coherent system at the expense of backward computability. May be targeting Chromebook OS market, where backward compatibility isn't as much as a concern.
[1] https://medium.com/microsoft-design/designing-the-new-era-of-teams-523…
npunt · 2020-12-09
Yeah I truly don't understand who (if anyone) is leading design at Microsoft. There's so many good examples of how to do things right in UI these days and they somehow keep making the wrong choices.
Other examples include their insistence on pixel-thin icons which are barely legible when reduced [1], flat buttons that are just colored boxes devoid of even basic button affordances, hard edges everywhere, and nearly 100% saturated colors that are an assault on the eyes.
They've never been very good at UI, but where they are these days is just bad. Their new Fluent design language [2] on mobile looks like an improvement from Metro, they're actually seeing what others are doing and copying it decently enough, but its not really out there much in their products.
[1] example here https://medium.com/microsoft-design/evolving-the-microsoft-fluent-desi…
[2] https://www.microsoft.com/design/fluent/
jug · 2020-10-12
I think the traditional "desktop Office" is going away completely, even on Windows.
They're building a new Fluent UI for React Native library and it's designed to work across Windows, macOS, iOS, Android. Microsoft Design has blogged [1] about it being the future for the Microsoft 365 initiative (of which Office 365 is a subset).
They've also sunset the "Online" branding for Office Online. It's now simply "Office". [2]
I think they're intentionally blurring the lines here to eventually have everything converge. And save many, many development hours while at it. I wouldn't be surprised if the "Windows Office" will become something hosted in their new WebView2 control (Chromium-based Edge renderer).
[1] https://medium.com/microsoft-design/how-fluent-ui-unlocks-the-next-gen…
[2] https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/office-apps-blog/why-office-onl…