Baskerville Is the Greatest Font, Statistically, Says Filmmaker Errol Morris 158
Posted
by
timothy
from the your-brain-is-vulnerable dept.
from the your-brain-is-vulnerable dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A survey of unsuspecting New York Times readers implicitly answered the question: Does a certain font make you agree or disagree more often than another font? It turns out Baskerville confers a 1.5% advantage towards agreement on a survey question, compared to an average of six fonts. They were asked to agree or disagree to a passage from physicist David Deutsch's book The Beginning of Infinity, and were found to have an optimistic, if Baskerville-favoring, outlook on life. David Dunning, a psychologist awarded a Nobel prize and, separately, an IgNobel prize (for the eponymous Dunning-Kruger Effect), called Baskerville 'the king of fonts.' Sadly, Comic Sans — notable for its appearance in the Higgs Boson announcement — seems to be the weakest font. And why did Lisa Randall, the Harvard physicist responsible for that Higgs announcement use Comic Sans? According to the article, 'Because I like it.'"
Re:Compensatory depletion (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, and lest you think I'm a-hatin', most of the above applies to me as well.
Re:watch the "Helvtica" documentary... (Score:4, Interesting)
I recommend the whole "design triology" ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Trilogy [wikipedia.org]
And for those with more time, to read the 3-volume set "Design Classics 001-999" ... http://uk.phaidon.com/store/design/phaidon-design-classics-9780714843995/ [phaidon.com]
Re:OMG Flamebait - Flame on! (Score:5, Interesting)
Dyslexia [dyslexic.com]
While not the best, it's decent and by far the most widely available (of the fonts dyslexics find easier to read).
Garamond (Score:5, Interesting)
In the Typography course I took, we were taught that the greatest font of all time is Garamond [wikipedia.org].
It wasn't even tested in this article.
Re:Compensatory depletion (Score:5, Interesting)
I find Comic Sans very hard to read. Times New Roman too. Can't understand how these fonts can be allowed to exist!
I actually asked an OFSTED inspector why Comic Sans is always used in schools and nurseries - she said that it's one of the only commonly-available fonts that draws the lowercase letter "a" in the same way they teach children to draw it (no stalk on top)