See a selection of results in ‘Why Fonts Matter’, Penguin/Random House, 2016. Type Tasting online Font Census survey results. See how the tone changes from one font to another. Here are the top traits for serif styles like Times New Roman vs sans serif styles like Calibri and Arial, as identified in the Font Census. But is my assumption borne out by the research results? I think switching from Times New Roman to Calibri is like changing from formal work shoes into a pair of canvas shoes.
Each creates a different first impression, much like your clothes. It depends on what qualities you want to convey and who your audience is. See the end notes on cultural assumptions (2). From the results I can show that fonts do have personalities and there’s broad consensus about these. I tally up the results once a font has received between 100 and 350 responses.
Participants then complete a multiple-choice survey. This assigns participants a font randomly and blind. While writing the book ‘Why Fonts Matter’ I was curious to find out whether I was alone in associating fonts with specific personality traits. Serifs may look like tiny details, but they can have surprising emotional impact. Fonts without, or “sans”, serifs were first printed in around 1800 and have only been popular for the last century.
Serifs are the small feet on Roman type styles, which were first printed in the late 1400s. The two styles having a face-off are fonts with serifs vs those without serifs. Serifs or no serifs, what’s the big deal? This is a change that will have emotional impact for government staff using fonts and readers consuming fonts. A change of style from serif to sans serif signals a change in tone of voice. Times New Roman could have been replaced with a more modern and accessible font with serifs, in other words a font in a similar style. Today’s research shows that most of the time readability is not a serif/sans serif issue. The debunked theory is based on the days of low resolution screens. But, recent research has debunked the idea that fonts with serifs are any harder to read on today’s high resolution screens, more on this later. Of course, there is no one font to suit all situations-we should always find out what works best for our target audience. The reason given for the switch is to improve readability and to make communications more accessible. The BBC asked me to talk about this in the interview. This resulted in proclamations of “we did it first” in British newspapers. The UK’s Home Office and Supreme Court had issued similar instructions a year earlier. The US State Department had banned Times New Roman, a font with serifs, and instructed staff to use the sans serif font Calibri instead. I was invited onto BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to talk about fonts. I incorporate the research results into activities in my workshops and events to show that the results work in real life situations. I’ve co-published studies with a professor from Oxford University and published results in my books including ‘Why Fonts Matter’ (Penguin/Random House). I’m a graphic designer and I’ve been measuring your emotional response to fonts since 2013. Unless you’re a type expert, in which case you’ll notice the nuances in a similar way to a wine expert tasting wine. If a publication or brand you’re familiar with changes its font you’ll feel that something’s different, but you probably won’t know what changed. You’re not consciously aware of the font styles when you read, but you’ll feel their emotional impact. I’ll call these fonts, although they should really be called typefaces (1). These squiggles come in many different styles. As if by magic-instructions, ideas, stories, songs, flavours, smells and messages are transmitted directly into your head. You can look straight at them, but you don’t really see them. It creates a cloaking device that makes the squiggles seem imperceptible once they’re arranged into words and sentences. Not to call attention to themselves and to be in the spotlight by appearing in an article like this. It’s their job to be unobtrusive as they spell out the words you read. Letters are squiggles on a page or a screen. I asked you to pit Times New Roman and Calibri against each other. This is a psychological battle of typeface personalities. Times New Roman or Calibri? Does changing your font make a difference?ĭive into the ultimate showdown in the world of fonts: serif vs sans serif.
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