Hard-to-Read Fonts: Beneficial for the Brain?
Two recent Princeton studies on fonts and learning have generated some striking (and counter-intuitive) results: reading information in difficult-to-read fonts may actually increase learning and memory.
Difficult-to-read fonts may help you learn more! Who knew?
The researchers implementing the studies took volunteers and presented them with information about different made-up alien races. One group was given alien information presented 16-point Arial pure black font, a font easy to read and understand. The other group of volunteers was given alien stats in 12-point Comic Sans MS 75% greyscale font or 12-point Bodoni MT 75% greyscale. Volunteers were then distracted for 15 minutes and tested to see how much information about the aliens they could recall.
The group with the harder-to-read fonts actually remembered 14% more alien info overall! The study was first administered to 28 college students, then to 222 grade school students, with similar results. This helped to eliminate any sort of age-based rebuttal of the results. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, hard-to-read fonts may actually help people learn more of the information they are reading! This is a result of “disfluency,” which is a situation that occurs when something is difficult to read, and doesn’t quite “flow” as well. In working harder to process and understand, the reader is then able to recall more of the information later. To learn more about the study and its implications, check out this article from LifeHacker and this article from BBC News, both of which helped to inform this post.
Will a customer better remember the information in this ad because the font is hard to read?
So what does this mean for business and the print industry? As can be seen from the studies, fonts can have a big impact on the information a reader takes away from a sign or banner, and when that reader is a potential customer, the font becomes even that much more important! Keep in mind that the implications of the studies are relatively, small, and many more studies will need to be conducted to create firmer results, but it should stimulate some thinking about your current fonts and how they may be affecting how people remember your business. I think business owners and printers should take away two important things from these findings: One, fonts do have a range of definite impacts on readers and customers. Two, it’s crucial for business owners, printers, and designers to always keep fonts in their mind: how they look (objectively), what they’re saying, and if people are able to read them or not. Interestingly enough, it may be beneficial to make some fonts a little more difficult-to-read if you’re trying to get consumers to remember things about your business. It will be interesting to see further studies in this area and see what their implications are. You can always check out our range of font options (both easy and difficult-to-read varieties) at PrintShipNow.com.
First and second images courtesy of www.makeuseof.com and www.kristinsart.com, respectively.
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