typefaces graphic designers use
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
can shape how people will perceive
a message or a person,
and that includes politicians.
