Just My Type

The one-picture-to-a-thousand-words ratio unjustly downplays the importance of typestyles. Academics and marketers have long known that the choice of font in logos and advertising copy greatly influences legibility, memorability, and public perception of the brand. Companies need typestyles that suit their images and reflect their intentions. To help them choose the right fonts for their messages, my colleagues at Washington State University—Joan L. Giese and Joseph A. Cote—and I rounded up 210 typefaces and identified a half-dozen discrete design components in each. We then looked at how those components affect consumers’ responses to a brand. Specifically, we asked consumers to what degree the fonts conveyed a message that was pleasing (likable, warm, attractive); engaging (interesting, emotional); reassuring (calm, honest, familiar); and prominent (strong, masculine). The results should get marketers thinking about the messages their logos and ads are—perhaps inadvertently—sending and how they might better exploit typefaces to shape customers’ perceptions. Our research yielded six clusters of fonts that produced similar effects among consumers. The first group comprises fonts that are considered likable, warm, attractive, interesting, emotional, feminine, and delicate. But they are not especially strong or reassuring. Such fonts have considerable aesthetic appeal but do not inspire great confidence. They include: The second group comprises fonts we defined as interesting, emotional, exciting, and innovative. They are also unsettling and unfamiliar. They could put off some marketers but might be effective in edgier campaigns. These fonts include: The third group of fonts represents the worst of all worlds: disliked, cold, unattractive, uninteresting, and unemotional. But these typefaces aren’t useless. Companies might, for example, use them to display characteristics or claims of a countercultural or competing brand. They include: The fourth group of fonts is strong and masculine. Their weighty lines suggest a forcefulness and solidity coveted by many brands. They include: The fifth group gets high marks for being interesting, emotional, exciting, and informal. But these fonts are also considered dishonest, cold, and unattractive. They are good for conveying negative information or for targeting such niche markets as punk rock fans. These fonts include: The final group, which contains many common, highly readable fonts, makes up in comfort what it lacks in excitement. If you want to convey “stalwart of the community,” these are your fonts: Most important, we demonstrate the trade-offs corporations must accept in choosing fonts. Not all the impressions an organization may want to create can be achieved at the same time. Some desirable traits—such as engaging and reassuring—are mutually exclusive. But companies can use an understanding of typestyle attributes to design their own fonts and, consequently, exert maximum control over their messages. That’s what Disney and Hallmark did, and their fonts have become integral—and beloved—parts of their brands.

Just My Type

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