Here's the fonts Trump’s using on the new whitehouse dot gov
Plus: Meet the five women on the final edition of the American Women Quarters Program
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at the redesigned White House website and the final class of quarters the U.S. Mint is putting out as part of a four-year program to put more women on currency.
Scroll to the end to see: Trump’s earliest political website 🖥️
Here’s the fonts Trump’s using on the new whitehouse dot gov
If fonts are a physical representation of a politician’s “voice” translated for the written form, then President Donald Trump’s starting his new term from scratch. Just after 12:01 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, whitehouse.gov was updated for a new administration with new fonts and a new layout.
The site is set in Instrument Serif and Instrument Sans, a pair of fonts designed by Rodrigo Fuenzalida and Jordan Egstad. The serif, which is used for the “America Is Back” message displayed on the homepage, is a condensed display font that Google Fonts says “offers a contemporary take on some of the time-tested characteristics found in old-style serifs,” while the sans serif is variable and “balances an abundance of precision with subtle notes of playfulness.”
Instrument Sans is popular online, used in more than 30,900 websites, according to Google Fonts, while Instrument Serif is less common, used on just more than 7,700 websites. The White House has used Instrument Serif for some of the first social graphics posted to Trump’s POTUS account.
For now, the new White House site has just three pages for “News,” “Issues,” and “Administration.” Unlike under the Biden and Obama administrations, there is no Spanish-language version of the site.
The “Administration” page shows the rather unconventional headshots of Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. The photos were taken by Trump’s chief photographer, Daniel Torok, who said on X that he used an edge light, hair light, clamshell strip, and 4-inch soft light to achieve the dramatic look.
If Trump’s official headshot looks a bit like his mugshot, that’s because it’s reportedly exactly how he wanted it. After seeing other defendants in the Georgia election interference case depicted in unflattering, washed-out booking photos, Trump practiced different facial expressions until he found a scowl he liked and used it for his mugshot, an adviser told The Atlantic, which reported, “Trump loved the result. And when it came time to pose for photos for the official inaugural program, he re-created it.”
Job interviews to work in the Trump administration have reportedly included questions to test fealty to the president, including whether or not job seekers believe the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen, according to The New York Times. If that’s the case, whitehouse dot gov might not get a job working in the White House. Trump’s bio states, “He remarkably won the Presidency in his first ever run for any political office. He won a second time despite several assassination attempts and the unprecedented weaponization of law fare against him,” like 2020 never happened.
There’s also a new White House icon on the site. Previous icons shown on websites for President Joe Biden and Trump before he left office after his first term were less detailed than the new Trump White House icon, which uses a full-color U.S. flag and details like paned windows, molding, and railing on the roof.
The White House website wasn’t the only one to be updated Monday. Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ website was updated from a campaign site to a site for the new office of Kamala D. Harris. The site uses Denton, the same serif font Harris used during the campaign, along with the sans-serif Balto, another one of her campaign’s fonts.
In 2024, Trump campaigned almost exclusively in Gotham. Without a brand guide as layered as Harris’, his campaign brand couldn’t simply be reconfigured to go from election mode to governing, the typographic equivalent of someone without an inside voice. Neither did Trump’s White House bring back Merriweather, the font the site used in his first term that the Jan. 6 committee used against him during its investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Instrument Serif and Instrument Sans are the fonts of a new administration, and already, they’ve been used to to write Trump’s flurry of day one executive orders, from withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization to pardoning more than 1,500 people charged with crimes in connection to the Capitol attack, including those who attacked police. These are now fonts of the state, backed by the power of the executive branch.
Meet the five women on the final edition of the American Women Quarters Program
The U.S. Mint is wrapping up its four-year American Women Quarters Program with new quarters coming out this year depicting historic figures like a tennis star, an astronomer whose work is credited with leading to the discovery of dark matter, and the founder of the Girl Scouts.
Started in 2022, the American Women Quarters Program is an attempt to balance out the faces of U.S. currency, which is dominated by men. With five new quarters released each year since then, coins depicting women like Eleanor Roosevelt and Sally Ride have entered circulation, telling a more complete story about the people who’ve helped shape America. This year is the fourth and final year of the program.
“This program has recognized the remarkable legacies of these extraordinary she-roes,” U.S. Mint Director Ventris C. Gibson said in a statement. “These beautiful American Women quarters will be in circulation for decades to come and continue to educate the American people on our incredible honorees.”
The final class of new quarters includes Ida B. Wells, a Black woman born into slavery in Mississippi during the middle of the Civil War who went on to work in journalism, fight against lynching, champion women’s right to vote, and found the National Association of Colored Women’s Club. Wells’s quarter, sculpted by Mint medallic artist Phebe Hemphill, cites her professions as a journalist, suffragist, and civil rights activist.
Juliette Gordon Low founded what would later be known as the Girl Scouts in 1912 after meeting the British founder of the Boy Scouts, Lord Robert Baden-Powell. The following year, the organization published its first handbook, How Girls Can Help Their Country. Sculptor Eric David Custer depicts Low in uniform alongside the first Girl Scout Trefoil, which she designed.
When Vera Rubin told her high school teacher she was attending Vassar University, he told her “as long as you stay away from science, you should do okay.” Rubin went on to prove that teacher wrong, making discoveries as an astronomer that expanded our knowledge of the universe. Rubin also published more than 100 scientific papers, according to the National Women’s History Museum. Rubin’s quarter, sculpted by Mint medallic artist John P. McGraw, shows her staring off into the cosmos with a spiral galaxy background.
Born in 1987 with congenital muscular dystrophy, Stacey Park Milbern was a disability rights activist who founded the Disability Justice Culture Club. She was named by then-President Barack Obama to the President’s Committee for People With Intellectual Disabilities in 2014. Milbern was a producer for Netflix’s Oscar-nominated documentary Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution in 2020. Milbern died that same year at the age of 33. Her coin is sculpted by Craig A. Campbell.
Before Venus, Serena, and Billie Jean King, there was Althea Gibson. A tennis star of the 1950s, Gibson faced segregation and discrimination and went on to become the first Black woman in history to win the U.S. Nationals, French Championship, and Wimbledon. Gibson was a multi-sport athlete, later becoming a golfer and the first Black woman on a Ladies Professional Golf Association tour. Her quarter, sculpted by Renata Gordon, calls Gibson a “trailblazing champion.”
U.S. currency has come a long way since 1979, when Susan B. Anthony became the first woman to appear on a U.S. circulating coin. With the final installment of the American Women Quarters Program, the faces and stories of 20 new women can now join her.
History of political design
Donald Trump’s first campaign website (2000). People forget, but before Trump ran for president in 2016, he flirted with a third-party bid to run for the Reform Party nomination. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine never captured the campaign site he briefly used, but luckily it once appeared on C-SPAN. Thank you, C-SPAN.
A portion of this newsletter was first published in Fast Company.
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And by FREEDOM they mean Trump’s not in jail.
Nice summary on the women featured on the quarters!
Also this designer will be avoiding Instrument Serif and Instrument Sans, lest anything I create bears a resemblance to Trump merch. Gotham all the way!