Typography, Perception and Cognition

Think fonts don't matter? BBC: An air traffic controller sent a Glasgow plane to Cardiff after misreading small computer text at the new control centre… “Screens blamed for air blunders.” May 23, 2002

How do the fonts chosen for documents and information affect sense-making? At Wichita State University, the Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) team specializes in user interface design research for software and websites. They have done some interesting studies about the effect on reader perceptions and cognition of different fonts, line lengths, multiple columns, etc.

For example, they studied how the chosen fonts change reader perceptions of the author and/or of the material, finding: "Typefaces can influence the mood of a document in three possible ways: the typeface may reinforce the text and mood; the typefaces may conflict with the message/mood; or there may be no influence resulting in a neutral effect." They used Calibri, Comic Sans and Gigi and found—not surprisingly that people got low scores for knowledge, believability, maturity, professionalism, and trustworthiness when they used Gigi in their emails.

In "Perception of Fonts: Perceived Personality Traits and Uses," Shaikh, Chaparro, and Fox (2006) polled user perceptions about 20 fonts for 25 different uses (business documents, web pages, email, etc.). They found big differences:

Sans Serif Fonts. Users preferred Sans Serif fonts for Website Text (62%), Email (60%), and Online Magazines (56%). Sans Serif fonts were least preferred for Digital Scrapbooking (32%), Computer Programming (34%), and Math Documents (36%).

Serif Fonts. Users preferred Serif fonts for Business Documents (71%), Website Text (67%), and Online Magazines (63%). The three uses that were least associated with Serif fonts were Scrapbooking (28%), Children’s Documents (34%), and E-Greetings (38%).

Script/Funny Fonts. Digital Scrapbooking (61%), E-Greeting (60%), and Website Graphics (53%) were rated as the highest uses for this group of fonts. The Script/Funny fonts were not preferred for Computer Programming (2%), Scientific Documents (3%), Spreadsheets (3%), and Math Documents (3%).

Modern Display Fonts. The three uses rated the highest by users for Modern Display fonts were Website Graphics (47%), Website Headlines (44%) and Website Advertisements (44%). The uses least often chosen for this group were Online Tests (9%), E-Books (9%), Spreadsheets (10%), and Online Assignments (10%).

Monospaced Fonts. Users chose Technical Documents (45%), Computer Programming (40%), and Math Documents (40%) as the highest uses for Monospaced fonts. The uses receiving the fewest votes were Digital Scrapbooking (18%), E-Greeting (21%), and PowerPoint (22%).

Another study that confirmed some of my long-held beliefs about justification (so to speak), line length and columns. In “Is Multiple-Column Online Text Better?” J. Ryan Baker investigated the effects of on reading performance and satisfaction and summarized some of the current findings on typesetting and reading:

• Longer line lengths generally facilitate faster reading speeds.
• Shorter line lengths result in increased comprehension.
• The optimal number of characters per line is between 45 and 65.
• Paging through online text generally results in better comprehension than scrolling.
• Reading speed is faster for both single and multiple columns, but preference is for multiple short columns.
• Left-justified text is read faster than full-justified text.

A lot of the font research at SURL seems to be supported by Microsoft, and included some of the new fonts designed for standard inclusion with Windows Vista, which are pretty nice--but not universal yet.

Via: Font Blog

Comments

[Steve]

Lately, for example, I’ve been using Calisto MT, which has a wonderful literary elegance while still being highly readable on screen or on paper.