The default outline weights have increased in Office and Microsoft says that it has improved 'consistency between shapes and lines, and added better contrast' as well. The teams researched color palettes and design trends to create a new default color palette for all Office applications. Aptos supports 'a variety of weights and includes variants such as narrow, serif, and monospace'. Aptos, which was called Bierstadt initially, replaces the font Calibri, which has been the standard font in Office applications for 15 years.
The selection process involved users and their feedback. The new default font Aptos was picked by Microsoft over four other fonts. The new Office theme as a 'default font, color palette, style, and line weight' to modernize documents and improve their accessibility. Kwok notes that the PowerPoint team worked hand in hand with the Word, Excel and Outlook teams to create a new Office theme for use in all of those applications. On July 19th, 2023, Microsoft PowerPoint product manager Jess Kwok announced that a new Office theme is coming to Microsoft 365 applications.
