When the White House redesigned its website in late January, complete with a brand new font, Jordan Egstad was as surprised as anyone else.
“I was in a bunch of meetings on that particular day, but my phone was just kind of glowing in the corner of my eye,” he told Jezebel. “I had two or three friends messaging me the whitehouse[dot]gov link with no caption, or captions that were cryptic, like ‘Oh my God.’” He braced himself for what he assumed was “more bad news” about the U.S.—courtesy of Trump’s new presidency—before realizing that everyone was alerting him that the new White House website was using fonts he helped create.
It’s not unusual for a new president to implement a website redesign upon entering office. In 2009, Obama revamped the White House website with Hoefler Text, a font from Hoefler & Co., the same typeface he used on his campaign trail. Trump switched to Merriweather and Roboto in 2017, and in 2021, Biden adopted Decimal (also part of the Hoefler & Co. family) to embrace high-contrast designs that were accessible and easy to read. On January 20, Trump’s new White House changed the website again, introducing a dark-blue interface with Instrument Serif and Instrument Sans.
We’re all allowed one weird, niche thing to be obsessed with. For me, it’s fonts—and in 2023, I published my first-ever print article about Sahar Afshar, a calligrapher and designer who specializes in Arabic typeface. So, when the latest White House redesign occurred, I was curious to know more about Instrument—and whether the artist behind it agreed with what it was being used for. So I found Egstad.
“Because of my own personal political views, it rubbed me the wrong way, and even left me with sort of a wrestling with the idea of open-sourcing fonts in the future,” he tells me.
Egstad is a Portland-based graphic designer and web developer who helps brands redesign themselves and sometimes, makes fonts. He and Rodrigo Fuenzalida developed Instrument Serif and Instrument Sans for a design agency in 2023, and they made the typefaces public because of their commitment to open-source software—meaning anyone could freely access, modify, or use them. “Open source is just a part of the development mindset,” Egstad explains. “We’re all just sharing our work with one another, and over time, I’ve come to see it as an act of generosity—but also an act of hope. You hope somebody takes it, and it’s useful, and they can make it better.”
That is—unless we’re talking about the current administration, who has so far in 2025 published 217 executive orders (one of which was the anti-DEI order that’s led to the loss of several crucial resources like key CDC programs tracking public health and a required report on indigenous deaths and disappearances); overseen—and blamed Democrats for—the longest government shutdown in U.S. history; and further eviscerated reproductive health with a new federal funding bill. Egstad’s font has been used to convey it all.
“It makes me proud to see other people use [the fonts] in ways that are enriching,” Egstad says, referring to the fact that he’s seen the typeface used in commercials, stores, and even love letters. “But I don’t love that the White House uses it at all.”
Egstad has a few theories about why the Trump administration was pulled toward Instrument fonts. For one, the font was free and public on Google Fonts (ironic, given the president’s spendthrift tendencies). For another, it has an authoritative voice. Plus, using art created by artists who disagree with his politics has become something of a hobby for our dear leader, who’s adorned every corner of the Oval Office with gold finishings, literally bulldozed the White House’s East Wing, and fantasized about making the Kennedy Center into a casino.
Egstad notes that in the world of fonts, some type-artists set boundaries—including explicit rules that their fonts cannot be used if their political values misalign with those of the person or group using them. “But with open sourcing,” he says, “you have to take the good with the bad.”
He stresses that he doesn’t think typefaces are devoid of political or historical significance, but that they’re also neutral tools—though his decision to make the font open source was made “in True Blue fashion.” He finds it particularly ironic—and something that makes him laugh under his breath—that Trump, a president who thrives on an exclusionary and increasingly cruel agenda, is using an open-sourced font to deliver it.
“Open source remains a good, powerful tool that I support fully,” Egstad concludes. “And also—fuck Donald Trump.”
Jordan Egstad is no longer with Instrument, and his thoughts are his own.
