Fonts have personality and political leanings

00:00:00 Is Century Gothic a conservative or a liberal font?

What about Times New Roman?

Daniel Tamul and Katherine Haenschen,

assistant professors of communication from Virginia Tech,

conducted a study to find out.

They showed a person’s name written in several typefaces

to participants in an online survey.

Then they asked them to rate

how liberal or conservative

the typeface or the person was.

The serif typefaces –

those with letters that start and end

with small flourishes like

Times New Roman and Jubilat –

were rated as more conservative

than the sans serif typefaces like

Gill Sans and Century Gothic.

The study also found that people

rated the fonts they liked as

more aligned with their own political ideology.

We don’t know if fonts

can override what you already

think of something or someone.

But it does seem that the

typefaces graphic designers use

can shape how people will perceive

a message or a person,

and that includes politicians.