Are Your Typography Choices Random?
Typography encompasses a lot. This is a simplified summary,
- Typeface
- Style (serif, sans serif, script)
- Size (10pt or 12pt)
- x-height (the height of letter “x” in different fonts)
- Weight – light, normal, bold
- Slant – normal or italic
- Spacing
- Between Letters (known as kerning)
- Between Sentences (leading)
- Layout
- Headlines, subheads, copy blocks
- Length of line of text
- Justifying
Do you ever wonder the rhyme or reason of these choices in your fundraising appeals?
It often seems random, absent any guiding theory. Take bolding and underlining …no please, take it.
Why do it? Visual hierarchy theory suggests people scan copy from most to least prominent. But if bolding and underlining are used too much it creates cognitive overload, making copy harder to read. How do you know if your usage is too little, too much or if it even matters?
Underlining can also make it much harder to read what’s called descenders of lowercase letters ( “g”, “j”, “p”, etc.).
What font type do you use? Is it research based? Tested even? There’s lots of evidence that typefaces connote different associations. Times New Roman evokes a sense of formality and reliability while Comic Sans evokes playfulness or casualness.
These visual associations happen faster in the brain than our understanding of the text. This means your font type can semantically prime word meaning. At minimum the two should be aligned and consistent.
For example, bold and bigger connote slowness or sturdiness. Is that a useful and consistent association with your brand or the story being told? If not, your bolding may decrease persuasiveness even if used sparingly.
Typography matters. We don’t know all the ways or what works best but start with theory and rationale and do some testing here rather than believing ‘best-practice’ is to bold all the sentences asking for money. It’s quite possible that is exactly wrong.
Kevin
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