From the podcast, I was quite interested in what Joseph had
said about how “unusual letters are what makes a typeface popular”.
Through my
research I came across an article that looks at typography, and how fonts can
actually affect the way we accept the information.
I found this quite interesting and looked into it further,
and came across an article from Dukes University Library site. It talks about
how the typeface ‘Georgia’ has appeared to get students better grades on their
papers.
The example they use is from a blog where a student looked
back at the 52 papers he had written while at university and worked out an on
average that serif fonts seemed to have a better tendency to influence the
grade over sans-serif fonts, on an unconscious level. He explains here:
"Well, would you believe it? My essays written in
Georgia did the best overall. This got me thinking as to why that might be:
maybe fonts speak a lot louder than we think they do. Especially to a professor
who has to wade through a collection of them; Times seems to be the norm, so it
really doesn’t set off any subconcious triggers. Georgia is enough like Times
to retain its academic feel, and is different enough to be something of a
relief for the grader. Trebuchet seems to set off a negative trigger, maybe
just based on the fact that it’s not as easy to read in print, maybe on the
fact that it looks like something off a blog rather than an academic journal.
Who knows."
I think this is because a serif font reads nicer to the eye when reading a large group of information. In the image below, it talks about how a serif font works more successfully on printed pages and sans serif fonts work better on computer screens.
This really interested me as we read type everywhere & everyday, but never think about whether the reason we take information in better, is because of the subject - or because of the font we are seeing?
Sources:
Date found: 4/3/13
Writer: Paolo Mangiafico
Date found: 5/4/13
Writer: Phil Renaud
Date found: 5/4/13
[image]
-Posted by Tess Pyke
I agree, we may think about the typeface we use in creating a piece of design in class but I hadn't realised quite what an impact the choice of font has. Apparently, if you want someone to believe that what you say is true, then choose Baskerville. It is the typeface of truth - most likely to induce credulity.
ReplyDeleteThis is statistically supported by an uncontrolled experiment carried out by the New York Times and analysed by Professor David Dunning at Cornell University. The Times ran an online quiz called “Are You an Optimist or a Pessimist?” which had a hidden agenda - to test the effects of typefaces on truth. The blog post explores this topic further, details the process of their experiment and gives an analysis of the results. The second part of the article contains some interesting historical information about the typeface and its creator John Baskerville.
Website: The New York Times - The Opinion Pages
Title: Hear, All Ye People; Hearken, O Earth (Part One)
Author: Errol Morris
Accessed: 6 April 2013
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-people-hearken-o-earth/#more-132505
The original article which led me to the NY Times blog was:
Website: Designer Observer
Title: The Typeface of Truth
Author: Michael Bierut
Accessed: 6 April 2013
http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/the-typeface-of-truth/35428/
Design Observer features news and critical essays on design, urbanism, social innovation and popular culture. There are some interesting readings.
Apparently there was an experiment done according to queerideas.co.uk that they asked a group of college student aged from 18-40 to recall fact given to them about two made up alien species. One sheet was given to them in 12 point bodoni font and another in 16 point arial. The student remembered 87% of facts from the bodoni sheet while the arial sheet had a remembering rate of 73%. There are details for another similar experiment on this site done with more depth.
ReplyDeleteBut the point I want to make is fonts do have an impact on how we read things (no pun intended). Making the font slightly different to what we are used to raises interest immediately because we interact with it more. The experiment concluded by saying smaller less legible types are great for taking in information because you have to slow down and actually read what it actually says, of course this applies to a certain point of legiblilaty. While clearer font like arial we can tend to skim over because its too easy to read.
http://www.queerideas.co.uk/my_weblog/2012/03/the-battle-of-the-sans-serif-versus-the-serif-font.html
By Mark Phillips, March 26 2012
http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/52/uk_font.htm
Great article about reading speed of fonts by University of Bristol
Sidney Ting