Most people do not pay attention to the typeface they use in their email, composing Word documents and creating PowerPoint presentations. However, fonts are starting to increase their profile with the documentary Helvetica, examining the appeal of this font, getting good notices. There are online sites where one can buy more than 58,000 fonts and there is even an online campaign to ban the silly typeface Comic Sans. Researchers at Wichita State University in Kansas have written a series of studies examining what the font of your choice says about you.

There are two main groups of typefaces: Serif and Sans Serif. Serif are letters with tiny horizontal lines added to the top and bottom of letters. Sans Serif do not have these horizontal lines. A research study polled 561 subjects in 2005 and 2006 on 20 popular fonts using 15 adjective pairs. The results can be found that those who wanted to create a good impression used Sans Serif fonts like Verdana and Arial. Typefaces that should be avoided were Impact, Gigi, and Courier New. Authors tend to fixate on fonts with one editor apologizing to writers for removing their unique font.

Tags: print design, typeface

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