And then, after a little while, the words disappeared.
Will they return? Be made permanent? The White House didn’t have any updates.
However, a spokesman did confirm a couple things about the mysterious “Oval Office” sign.
First, the president selected the swoopy font himself: “He is personally and very involved in these beautification projects.”
Second, haters to the left: “President Trump is making the White House beautiful and giving it the glory it deserves. Only people with a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome would find a problem with that.”
President Donald Trump has undertaken two different types of domestic agendas. One has involved pursuing mass deportations, imposing sweeping tariffs, and moving to deploy troops in American cities. The second has involved an extensive redecorating spree around the White House. He has replaced Oval Office greenery with gilded accents, remade the Lincoln bathroom in modern marble, paved over the rose garden and completely dismantled the East Wing for his future ballroom. He also created a “Presidential Walk of Fame” that trolled his predecessor by forgoing a portrait of Joe Biden in favor of a picture of an autopen.
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Like the “Oval Office” signage, the gold lettering on the “Presidential Walk of Fame” first appeared as a mock-up decal affixed to an exterior wall of the White House. And it uses the same font: Shelley Script, for all you font geeks out there.
Trump’s companies have long used ornate script typefaces, seemingly to convey elegance and class. A similar style of script – though not exactly the same font – is used in signage for Mar-a-Lago, the Trump International Golf Club, the Trump Palace building on the Upper East Side of New York.
“Trump typography is very consistent with many other things about the president,” says Thomas Phinney, a type designer and expert at identifying fonts. “Whether you think those things are good or not is another question, but I think it’s part of a consistent package.”
“What Trump is doing is he’s branding his presidency, his occupancy,” says Paul Shaw, a graphic designer and historian of typography.
It’s customary to ask economists what the president doing with the economy or military experts about what president is doing with the military. So, what do design professionals think of the type the president is putting on the side of the White House?
Shown a picture of the temporary “Oval Office” sign, Rick Paulus sighed.
“There’s incredibly little signage of any sort in the White House,” he said. “It’s a house. It’s not a hotel. It’s not a club.”
Historically, thinking about things like fonts and lettering has been someone else’s full-time job in the White House. Someone who is not also the president. During the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, it was Paulus, who held the title of White House chief calligrapher. Neither Clinton nor Bush offered any input on his artistic decisions, Paulus said in an interview, though first lady Laura Bush occasionally chimed in.
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“If he’s spending even 10 hours meeting with people about this stuff, that’s 10 hours he should be dedicating to something else,” Paulus said of the president.
Anyway, about Trump’s choice of font?
“Shelley is accessible, but it’s kind of pedestrian amongst the scripts,” Paulus offers. What makes Shelley worthy of this very polite diss is that “the connecting strokes from letter to letter are largely relatively weak,” he explained. “Scripts tend to be a little more elegant when they’re a little more compressed.”
“I’m sure I’ve seen it on a restaurant menu, for instance,” said Phinney, who noted that Shelley Script is often used for wedding invitations.
“It’s historically too light and weak for signage,” says Shaw, the historian – it’s usually seen on paper, not walls.
Tim Cramer, the owner of a conservative creative design agency called Mosaic – “a full service agency, we just don’t work with liberal causes or companies that promote woke,” he explained – had some reservations about the prospective “Oval Office” lettering.
“I’m not crazy about that font” for a sign, says Cramer, a Trump supporter. “It’s high-class. It looks fancy.” But: “It’s not utilitarian. It is just the opposite of what it is being used for.” If the president had enlisted Cramer’s services, he said, “I would have made it a plaque, probably something made out of bronze with a utilitarian font that is high contrast against both the background and the substrate of the building, so that if you look at it at a distance, you can see it easily.”