Sunday, February 15, 2015

Fonts: the forgotten communicator

Last semester I conducted an unofficial experiment. Halfway through the semester, I decided to start turning in my assignments in the same font as The New York Times: Georgia.

When I did that, all of my grades improved and continued improving. Yes, it's impossible to know if changing my font had any effect, but I think it did. Maybe writing in the NYT's distinct font made me write more like the distinguished newspaper sounds. Or maybe my professors thought my writing sounded better because they made that association. Maybe it did nothing at all, but my grades still improved, 

Fonts are so important to branding in media. I know I'm reading a NYT's article when I see numbers like this 12345, and I associate that look with quality journalism. Great brands often are consistent with their fonts. For example, Apple products are uniformly wrapped in Helvetica. 

It's all in the details, and when establishing any brand, consistency is key. 

Note: 
I learned through some research for this post that font and typeface aren't synonyms. A typeface is a variation of a font. For example, Helvetica Bold is a typeface for the font Helvetica.










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