As a logo designer, I need to choose the right the fonts for my logotypes, with the time I learn fonts can evoke feelings in customers’ minds. By understanding the power of the fonts, You can create a powerful brand identity. 

I see a hundred fonts every day, from the news I read to the advertising I pass on my way to school. The successful ones will stick with me, while those that miss 

the marl means something isn’t doing the job it needs to.

But what makes a good successful font? the answer comes in the form of font psychology, meaning there’s a connected emotional and visual reaction to whichever font you may choose to represent yourself. Especially in the digital age, a connection is more important than ever. 

Creating a strong relationship with your audience as a budding brand, establishing yourself within a growing industry, or simply connecting with others on a personal level is the key. 

What is Font Psychology?

Font psychology is the study of how typography can affect the mind, influencing decision-making and emotional cues.

The main psychological factor in typography is the deep cultural cues ingrained in the letters’ forms and shapes. Thousands of years of history and evolution of language are ingrained in all the fonts we use today.

When you understand this critical link between words and visual cues, you’re on your way to mastering font psychology and using it to enhance your branding and marketing strategies.

Why do fonts have meaning?

Everything is relative to our primitive traits, every time you will see a font, your bran will activate the visual traits: Wide, Loose, Thin.

Our eyes quickly see primitive features like color and size that pop out. We unconsciously recognize the relationships elements have with each other and the relationship they have with the whole.

Our ability to recognize relationships allows us to separate figures and ground and organize the information we see into meaningful groups of units.

Being able to quickly recognize primitive features like color and size also enables us to distinguish textures, which are essentially areas with similar features. We recognize changes in texture and see the change as a border or boundary between two textures.

We can organize and structure our designs in ways that complement and speed up visual processing. We can grab attention and provide meaning to what’s on the page through the use of primitive features and grouping. We begin the process of communicating with our viewers before they’re even consciously paying attention.

Long Thin Lines Convey Beauty

In most countries, the “standard” for beauty is tall and thin. Seeing these traits in a font will activate your concept of beauty. Typefaces that are lighter in weight (in width and stroke thickness) are seen as delicate, gentle, and feminine, while heavier typefaces are strong, aggressive, and masculine.

Bold Fonts Are Powerful and Masculine

Bold fonts seem extreme, bold can be made to mean ‘daring’, ‘assertive’, or ‘solid’ and ‘substantial’, for instance, and its opposite can be made to mean ‘timid’, or ‘insubstantial’. But the values may also be reversed. Boldness may have a more negative meaning. It may be made to mean ‘domineering’, or ‘overbearing’.

Bold fonts also seem masculine because of their resemblance to a bulky stature. 

Round Fonts Convey Comfort and Softness

Humans prefer round objects because sharp objects feel threatening, sharp transitions in contour might convey a sense of threat and therefore trigger a negative bias.

Round fonts are particularly effective for Softness or comfort, Femininity or beauty, and Sweet foods. 

However, angular fonts are better for, A formal and official tone, Masculine traits, and Foods that are bitter, salty, or sour. 

Lowercase Conveys Compassion and Innovation

Lowercase letters are effective with “caregiver” brands that promote compassion and altruismUppercase Conveys Power and Strength, Uppercase letters are effective for “hero” brands that convey energy, courageousness, and focus. BWM, Diesel, Duracell, Nike, and Sony are also using capitals in their word marks, to express their power and strength.

Why we should font psychology

Behind Fint psychology lies the power to drive your decisions and goals. Opening yourself up to understanding how people react to font means you have influence over how your design and business are perceived by who you´d like to target.

When we design something, there’s an end goal in mind. One of the key tools in the design toolkit is the knack of picking fonts that will inspire and empower your message, enabling you to achieve the goals you set out to. If you’re designing for a flash sale, the right signage fonts will help prompt consumers to buy instead of browsing. The perfect combination of fonts for social media posts makes it more likely that consumers will continue to return and engage with your content. Generating these feelings of excitement, trust and anticipation mean people will be excited to engage and buy from you.

Serif fonts

We’ve all used a serif font at one point or another. They are considered one of the most traditional font options of the bunch. They’re most often used to create a classic, traditional and stable look and feel. This font is a great match for brands and businesses that feel established, or want to evoke a sense of trust and respectability.

Businesses that are most likely to use serif fonts include law firms, insurance companies, and consultants. It can also work for a business that wants to convey knowledge and authority of a subject or a design for more formal situations.

Slab serif fonts

Think of slab serif as the little brother of serif fonts—the same family, but with the bold confidence of youth. The two categories may look similar, but with slab serif fonts the serif is squared off giving a chunkier look and feel. They still have that same heir of tradition but are a lot bolder, distinctive, and more confident.

Slab serif fonts are perfect for those businesses that want to pack a punch and leave a lasting impact. Coupled with new innovation and intuitive products, slab serif fonts can help to convey that energy. Popular picks for slab serif fonts include Courier, Rockwell and Museo.

San serif fonts

Clean, crisp and modern, sans serif fonts are both minimal and engaging. These fonts are straightforward and embody a no-nonsense attitude, but also feel progressive and open. There aren’t any extra flourishes that might distract the eye—san serif takes a simple yet effective approach.

There’s a clear break with tradition here, with psychological associations of adventure and modernity. This clean and simple look is often found in fonts used by tech companies (think of how the Google logo has changed from serif to sans serif in 2015) and brands that may consider themselves as forward-thinking and modern. Look to Arial, Century Gothic and Helvetica as classic examples.

Script fonts

Feeling fancy? Try a script font. They have a feeling of femininity and elegance, their hand-written element provoking creativity. They’re fun and romantic, mimicking forms of handwriting and doodling.

Script fonts are the most likely to inspire other creative ideas, rich in both emotion and history. They’re a perfect match for visual brands, though their artful nature means they should be used fleetingly and with caution, as too much usage can leave text feeling illegible. Lucida Script, Lobster and Zapfino are popular fonts you may be familiar with.

Modern fonts

Modern fonts are styles that are, well, modern, of our present time, new, and different from past fonts. They take on a more futuristic look, though it’s actually rooted in 18th-century history, first appearing in print in 1784 thanks to the typographer Firmin Didot. Modern fonts combine practicality and playfulness, their legibility transitions between thick and thin strokes.

These fonts each create a sense of exclusivity and intellect. It’s a great way to announce your brand by showcasing it with a modern font, particularly attracting the interest of the millennial demographic. Discover Matchbook, Politica, and Klavika to put this psychology into practice.

Display fonts

Often display fonts are used for large-format mediums like billboards, headings, or book covers. They can be serif, slab serif, sans serif, and so on. They can also be a unique, decorative style. Novel and trail-blazing, there can be a pictorial element to these fonts, though these are used solely for eye-catching headlines.

When using a display font the style will affect what your audience will associate with the font. In general, display fonts can evoke a more casual, fun, or unique look and feel. The biggest plus is being able to adapt a font to exactly suit your personality, which can be ideal for any kind of business. Look out for Bombing, Gigi, and Jokerman as examples of this.

References

Fonts Psychology. https://medium.com/@mdougl18/the-psychology-of-fonts-a3d21c7dced3 Accessed on 3.4.2022