Font Psychology

                                                  What is font psychology?

 Font psychology is basically how the font of a text or anything affects us mentally. Different fonts can make a big difference on how we  think, feel, and how we behave. Since not everyone is the same opinions on fonts are not always the same. Knowing what fonts to use and how fonts impact people is a great way to help make an impact on your overall design. Using font psychology helps make the right decisions for your design and also it gives you control on how your audience registers your work. 

   

In fonts there are 5 main classifications of typefaces and they are serif, sans serif, script, monospaced, and display. Serif and sans serif are usually used for body cap and headlines like titles. Script and display type faces are only for headlines. Fonts like serif and sans serif bring tradition, while as sans serif brings a modern aesthetic and show friendliness and informality. Knowing what what emotion you want to bring to your project or design can help influence your audience. 

This picture above shows us how even though they are not that different from each other, they can influence different opinions. As you can see they one on the left is serif which promotes a more elegant and sophisticated tone but the one on the right(sans serif) is more basic and what we see more in our day to day lives. Digging more deeper into different types faces, we have script which is a more creative font. Script fonts generally allow a viewer feel more emotion and also give off experience. If you want a project to be more visual and you want to emphasize that creative ability, script will do a great job at that. 

The picture above shows generally what script fonts look like, they show class but also artistic vibes. Moving on, the font monospaced can be perceived as a dull and unimaginative because it is more spaced out and looks like a typewriter.

According to the study done in 2006 by Wichita state university, the survey really showed that monospace was the least liked because of how plain it is. Not only does the survey cover information on monospace but also the other typefaces mentioned before. Serif got explained as a mature and stable font, but on the other hand sans serif had no positive or negative feed back. Script got perceived as funny but also feminine, and modern fonts were masculine and assertive and as mentioned before monospace was boring and dull. Next, we have to cover the display font which is usually seen as a bigger font and is mainly used for titles and covers. The display font takes a lot of inspiration from other types of writing like hand crafted and calligraphy. 

 

Digging deeper into the genre of sports magazines, a lot of sports magazines use faltige which is a serif font and is bold and powerful. One of the biggest sports magazine is Sports Illustrated and they have a custom font which is copyrighted and they use a couple different ones and they are called “Antenna,” “Quiosco,” “Farnham” and “Receiver.” The closest thing to sports illustrated font is impact which is through word. 

From a personal standpoint, the fonts used in these sports illustrated covers are impactful, they have so much emotion behind them not only because of the death of Kobe Bryant but the fonts help emphasize that this is an important cover. To continue, sports illustrated uses their own special fonts because of how it helps separate them from other magazines. The fonts are created and inspired from Cyrus Highsmith and also from W.A. Dwiggins. Even though Sports Illustrated are one of the top dogs in the sports media business, a lot of other companies use other fonts that help bring out meanings behind them. In a sports magazines another big font that is used is varsity and its sole purpose is for sports design. ESPN uses a font called ESP font. The ESPN font uses colors like red. black, and white to help create vivid and unique expressiveness.

The logo was created in 1985 and it was inspired by the type face called stop. The logo itself is so iconic having a huge impact on how sports is viewed today. ESPN is number 1 for sports broadcasting and their magazines are also amazing too. ESPN uses a A2 Beckett typeface and also Klavika, they both have a sharp tone with them and provide impact. Further more, for ESPN's default type palette, they use various weights and sizes of gergrotesque/gergrotesque condensed series. They also use hoefler and Co's tungsten for big numbers and they also use serif typefaces. 

sources

https://ooligan.pdx.edu/serif-sans-serif-typography/#:~:text=Traditionalists%20value%20the%20more%20conservative,sense%20of%20friendliness%20and%20informality.

https://www.canva.com/learn/font-psychology/

https://fabrikbrands.com/font-psychology-and-typography-inspiration-in-logo-design/

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/typography-emotions

https://threerooms.com/blog/what-is-a-display-font

https://www.vandelaydesign.com/sports-fonts/

https://www.reference.com/world-view/font-magazine-sports-illustrated-use-3eec6b75f0268ded

https://occupant.typenetwork.com/gallery/item/sports-illustrated

https://1000logos.net/espn-logo/

https://fontsinuse.com/