I’M FONT OF YOU

Fonts play a major role in advertising and conveying your message to your audience. Do you need a customer to fill up their details? Do you need sign-ups for a Non-profit organisation? Research shows that more people sign up to these desired actions if the form is easy to read and simple in typography. Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz were researchers who showed that the way we perceive information and estimate its difficulty can be drastically by the complexity of font typography. They also found that the people who registered for a particular event which had forms of a simple font had a higher attendance/follow up than those who were asked to fill up a form with a funky font.

FONTS AND WORKOUTS:

The researchers conducted an experiment based on the assumption that the likelihood of a person sticking to a workout regimen is proportionate to the length of the workout. A longer workout time estimated by the subject would mean a greater commitment to the workout routine, and people would be less likely to join the program or continue to perform these workouts. This is all based on simple logical reasoning, but Song and Schwarz decided to test two groups of subjects. The first group saw the list of different exercises in the routine described in a simple font (Arial), while the second group saw the exact same list of exercises but in a harder to read font, Brush.

The results were astounding — the subjects who read the same instructions in the hard to read font estimated that the regimen would take twice as long to complete. The first group who read the easy to read font estimated that the workout would take them 8.2 minutes to complete whereas the second group estimated a completion time of 16.1 minutes. It goes without saying that the first group would most probably stick to the regimen till the end.

FANCY FONTS FOR FANCY RESTAURANTS:

If you are selling an expensive product, describing the features could be written in a difficult to read font as it might give the impression that a lot of work went into the creation of the product and the skills required to build the product was higher. Similarly, in fancy restaurants, it makes sense to have stylish fonts in order to increase the perceived value of the dish and the expertise of the chef. But this approach works in a restaurant because people would likely want to know what the dish consists of and would invariably read till the end. However, in the use case of a product, customers may just skip the entire description and move on if it was too difficult for them to read.

IMPROVE YOUR TYPOGRAPHY:

• Less is more — In your messaging, banners, ads and web pages keep the number of fonts to a minimum. In my experience, 2–3 fonts at the most work best. However, I have seen many ads using even 7–8 fonts in their messaging. This not only confuses your audience but also disrupts the flow of the copy.
• White spaces — Take a leaf out of the book of Apple and use minimalist text with lots of white spaces between paragraphs. This gives the customer some breathing space while they consume the content instead of bombarding them with huge paragraphs of differently colored text boxes.
• Contrast is key — Choose to display the most important components of your messaging in a different color/size/font than that of the rest of the web page as it would help the customers differentiate between the various elements on the page.
• Consistency is the lock — Keep the messaging, font and size constant across the majority of the page instead of being all over the place in terms of size and color. Don’t give too many interruptions with fluctuations in size and colors as doing this will shift the focus of the customer.

MISTAKES AND REMEDIES IN TYPOGRAPHY:

• Capital letters: Use limited FULL CAPS words in your website and ad copy. They DRAW attention AWAY from the REST of the text AND cause UNNECESSARY fluctuations WHICH in turn makes the MESSAGING on the PAGE look UGLY and INCONSISTENT. If you want to emphasize some particular lines/words use italics for emphasis. If you have to set words in capitals, use proper small caps either with or without initial capitals.
• Quotes and Apostrophes: Use quotes which look like “66” and “99” when you quote text instead of only using apostrophes. It makes the quotes look professional and different from the other generic text on the page.
• Justification: Don’t use left and right aligned text in a web page copy if the justified text looks decent and without too many extra spaces. If the justified text has too many spaces, go for a right aligned text and focus on perfecting the placement in such a way that the text looks aligned without too many jagged edges and waves.

CONCLUSION:

You might not have given a second thought to typography and fonts so far in your marketing efforts but it is my suggestion that you start incorporating these guidelines as building blocks for your messaging and website copy. If there was just one thing you want to take away from this, it would be that unless you are selling premium/luxury goods, stick to basic fonts on your messaging and watch your results skyrocket.

“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.“ Arthur C. Clarke