Hyped as the first city to get its own font, Dubai and Microsoft have released the Dubai font. Office-Watch.com looks beyond the press releases for the details on the new font and Dubai font alternatives.
Dubai is a sans-serif OpenType font available for Windows and Mac.
It’s not a full-range Unicode font but enough for most regular uses. Dubai has Western and Arabic characters plus the common punctuation and other symbols (Trademark, Copyright, math).
Dollar, Yen/Yuan and Euro symbols are included but not the Russian Ruble.
Bold, Light and Medium
If you check Windows fonts panel, there are really four fonts installed: Bold, Light, Medium and Regular.
In Office, the Regular, Light and Medium variants show up in the fonts list just like any other font.
Who gets it?
Microsoft says it’s available to ‘Office 365 subscribers’ from today. As usual for Microsoft, you need to look for the fine print (especially when the fine print has been left out).
Dubai font is only available for Windows and Macintosh computers, if Office software is installed and linked to a current Office 365 account.
This Monday 1st May, we’ve checked all our Office software for the Dubai font. It only appears in Office 2016 for Windows desktop and the Office ‘Modern’ apps for Windows 10.
If you don’t see the Dubai font in your Office 2016 software (Window or Mac desktops) update Office to the latest version. Here’s the Dubai font in Office 2016 for Mac:
Not available
Dubai font is NOT available in Office for Apple or Android devices. Maybe the Dubai font will gradually appear on these other platforms?
A document with the Dubai font can be opened with one of those programs and the text will be displayed using another sans-serif font. You can edit the document and later open it on a Windows machine with the Dubai font still in place. This is Office ’round-tripping’ across devices, even when some software doesn’t support a feature or font.
Uses
Use the Dubai font in any Office program: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access or Publisher.
Dubai font can be selected for email messages but it’s not a good idea. The font won’t always appear exactly as the sender see it because the receivers computer many not have the same font (especially if it’s a new font). For emails, better to stick with common fonts.
A new font is always welcome but there’s nothing truly new or different in the Dubai font. There are many other sans-serif fonts to use, including Franklin Gothic, Lucida Sans, Segoe, Tahoma and Verdana (all included with Windows or Office).
See Dubai Font Alternatives for other font choices.
The Crown Prince of Dubai, with (apparently) no sense of irony, sees the Dubai font as a tool for self-expression.
