Errol Morris taught me that the greatest font, statistically, is Baskerville.
Actual data-driven typography. Pretty cool experiment. I wonder when the advertising industry will design the next hyper-believable font, Persuasion. I'm joking, of course, but it ought to be possible with experiments like these to suss out the characteristics of a font that engender any emotional response. /gets crackin'.
What a fantastic article. Baskerville has the gravitas necessary to be most convincing. and yet, in spite of its enormous disbelievability:We all know that we are influenced in many, many ways — many of which we remain blissfully unaware of. Could typefaces be one of them? Could the mere selection of a typeface influence us to believe one thing rather than another? Could typefaces work some unseen magic? Or malefaction?
omg, how can students believe anything I write if I present it to them in (blush) Comic Sans. “Dear @CERN,” wrote one science buff with a taste for typography. “Every time you use Comic Sans on a powerpoint, God kills Schrödinger’s cat. Please think of the cat.” Another groaned: “They used Comic Sans on the Higgs boson powerpoint presentation … Nope there is no hope for mankind.”