Which font can make or break your next ad’s results?
Roger Dooley noted in his book, Brainfluence, that a scientific study revealed that participants rated tasks written in hard-to-read fonts as much more difficult than tasks written in easy-to-read fonts. The study presented groups of people with instructions for a physical workout and then asked them how long they thought it would take to complete the workout. Those who read the instructions written in Arial, a very clean, easy-to-read font, thought that the workout would take an average of 8.2 minutes to complete. The groups that read the instructions printed in Brush Script, a rather difficult-to-read font, estimated that the same workout would take more than 16 minutes. It’s as if the font had more to do with the perceived difficulty level than the amount of pushups one had to complete.
Does that mean that Brush Script should be removed from every computer? Absolutely not. If you’re trying to convey that your product was difficult to create (to justify the higher price), a hard-to-read font may be perfect. However, you might also be communicating that it’s difficult to use. I’d bet most folks don’t spend much time when choosing a font for their PowerPoint or their flyer, but font selection should be considered carefully and never taken lightly. Choose the wrong one, and you just might wind up turning off your customers.