The topic of the blog today comes from this article on Futurity.org. To summarize, Professors at Princeton University ran an experiment to see if students would learn better if what they were learning was typeset in typefaces that were difficult to read. This idea is reinforced by the following:
The authors theorized that by making the font harder to read the information would seem more difficult to learn. Based on the concept of disfluency, the students would concentrate more carefully on learning the material. Disfluency, which occurs when something feels hard to do, has been shown to lead people to process information more deeply.I want to stress that I feel this experiment was done as well as an experiment possibly can be. After reading the article I don't feel like it was executed poorly in any way, and they do say at the end "...we do need to further test the theory..."
There is, however, a problem in how the results were interpreted and I think they would have had different findings if graphic designers were actively involved in the experiment (and I highly doubt they were).
Graphic design has existed for thousands of years dating to before the printing press, into the middle ages, and even to ancient Rome. It is a very well established profession with rules and guidelines that have existed for a very long time. If there's anything we have come to learn in those thousands of years regarding typography, it's that people are more willing to read type that is easy to read for the simple fact that hard to read typefaces are hard to read.
"But wait!" you say, "Mitchell, this study has nothing to do with what people are willing to read!" This is true, but there's another fact graphic designers have also known for at least hundreds of years. Things that look and feel different attract attention. When you're paying closer attention, you're more likely to retain information. It is my theory, then, that the students were able to retain the information not because it was hard to read but because it was something new and different. When they've spent the majority of their lives reading text set in Times New Roman and Arial, of course something typeset in Monotype Corsiva and Comic Sans is going to grab their attention. This is a strategy used on a daily basis by graphic designers worldwide.
Yet another thing we've learned, and you don't need to be a graphic designer for this, is that over time people become jaded to these new things. If textbooks were set in nothing but Comic Sans, you can bet they'd learn material no better than with Times New Roman now. Typefaces like Times New Roman, Garamond, and Baskerville were developed for the purpose of making words easier to read. Again, this was done because people are more willing to read what's easy to read. And really, who looks at a full page of Comic Sans in 10pt font and doesn't groan about having to read it?
SO, after a long setup, what does this have to do with branding? Honestly, my first reaction to the study was a vision of a world where websites, handouts, advertisements, and publications were filled with hard-to-read typefaces. Call it an attempt at a preventative measure by getting out the word that crazy, ridiculous typography on your websites and publications won't necessarily make the information stick. It could just as easily aggravate your potential customer into not reading it because it's too difficult to read. Creative typography doesn't need to be crazy or hard to read to avoid being boring or to make your message stay with the customer. It takes a little more care, but when done properly there can be really elegant, easy to read type that still looks eye catching and amazing.
So please, next time you sit down in your comfy computer chair and open Microsoft Word or your website content editor, think of me curled in the fetal position in the corner of the office and take your mouse off the Comic Sans selection; because hard to read typefaces are hard to read.
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