Why people perceive typefaces to have different personalities

Abstract

Although recent studies have demonstrated that people perceive different typefaces, such as Times New Roman, to have different personalities, or tones, many technical communicators continue to select typefaces based on intuition rather than carefully matching typeface personality to the rhetorical effect they intend for their document. These studies and earlier ones have analyzed quantitative data, such as people's ratings of different typefaces on different personality attributes. These studies have not addressed why people rate typefaces differently across personality attributes. We report findings from a survey that gathered both quantitative and qualitative data. We asked writing students to rate 15 typefaces on 10 personality attributes (e.g., "artistic") using 1-7 Likert scales. We also gathered qualitative data by soliciting written comments about the typeface ratings. We posed two research questions: 1) What personalities do different typefaces have, according to participants' assessments? and 2) How do participants explain their ratings of typeface personality, i.e,, why do they assess particular typefaces to have particular personalities? It is hoped that this study, combined with future research on the anatomical features of typefaces, will help technical communicators analyze typefaces so that they can make informed decisions when choosing typefaces for their documents.

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