The Baskerville typeface effect
Over at the NY Times, Errol Morris has conducted a very interesting test of the effect of typeface (you might call it “font”) on credibility. His article is definitely worth a read, but it requires a time commitment. For those of you who want the gist, use Baskerville if you want to maximize your credibility. In case you are still wondering, Comic Sans is a dud!
The test involved six typefaces. And Baskerville was the clear winner — even against very similar serif typefaces like Georgia.
If you want some idea of the contemporary typeface choices available to writers, check out FontFont — The world’s largest library of original contemporary typefaces.
Related articles
- Michael Bierut: Errol Morris Shocker: Baskerville is the Typeface of Truth (observatory.designobserver.com)
Thanks for sharing this, Kim. I’m tickled because I make my students use either Garamond or Baskerville for their papers. I’m trying to break the shackles of the hegemonic fonts: Times New Roman and (now) Cambria.
I’m a Garamond fan, too! Thinking about switching now.
Check your spelling of credibility. It’s harming yours.
Thanks, Diane. I don’t know what “credibability” is . . . but I don’t need any 😉
Well . . . I realized today I had TWO typos in this post. They’re fixed now!
Before I even saw the graph, I knew that Comic Sans would be at the low end.
Comic Sans was obviously included as a joke, which is sad. The internet shouldn’t joke about Comic Sans the way it does ( sites such as these http://bancomicsans.com/main/ ); in fact it was because of computers and ease of use that the typeface was initially created. Comic Sans was by far the most legible and easiest to read typeface in the early years of personal computing when screen resolutions were low, and website bandwidth and loading times were more of a crucial topic.
Thanks for sharing this with us, Ryan.