What Your Font of Choice Says About You
What Your Font of Choice Says About You
Year ago, people were fascinated by handwriting analysis. In fact, there was an entire professional sub-culture that psycho-analyzed people by their handwriting styles. That “profession” pretty much “died out” during the last decade of the 20th century for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, people stopped handwriting things other than grocery and to-do lists or quick notes on refrigerators to remind family members of their chores/tasks. And, schools, one by one, have stopped teaching cursive writing, other than to make sure that a student can write his/her own name. These changes don’t leave much for handwriting analysts to do these days.
Never Fear – A New Profession is Born
Maybe those old handwriting analysts are now back in business or new ones have emerged. Now, there is a whole body of research beginning to crop up based upon the font selections you make, in an attempt to determine your dominant personality traits based upon those selections. This will be a bit more difficult task, because most of us change fonts depending upon the purpose of our communication and our audience. Here are just a few examples of this:
- If you have a website, you want your font selection to be in keeping with the “tone” of the products or services you are offering. While you may not personally use script or decorative fonts on a daily basis, you like the idea of such fonts for headings and titles of your site content. You may use a script font, for example, if your products or services target an “upper-end” clientele who wants sophistication and elegance.
- In your personal communications, you may choose fonts based upon purpose. If you are crafting your own wedding invitations, for example, you will use a fancy calligraphy. Birthday party invitations for your kid, however, will use a comic sans or similar typography that suggest immaturity and fun.
- If you are a student, you are probably required to use certain fonts for the essays and papers you submit – Times New Roman or Arial, for example.
When You Have a Choice, What do you Choose?
Researchers are focusing on the font choices of people in their everyday communications with others – both formal and informal – such as emails, memos, social media posts, etc. And they have determined certain personality traits based upon those choices.
Serif
These choices indicate that an individual wants to be considered professional and that what s/he writes is valuable and worthy of being read. It is the typography used by newspapers and books. If you use this font all of the time, you want your writing to have “integrity.”
Sans Serif
These are “Serif” fonts, just minus the “feet.” Arial is an example. These fonts are typically used for website and blog content, because they are easily readable, plain, and simple. If you use one of these fonts regularly, you want to be considered modern and “with it.”
Monospaced Fonts
These are font like “courier,” and reflect older days when typewriters did the work. They are font used to write scripts, because one page = 1 minute of film, so it is easy to see how long a video will be. If this is your favored font, you may be longing to return to days gone by when things were just simpler.
Handwriting Fonts
Hopefully you do not use these fonts when writing a memo to your boss or colleagues. But if you use it in your everyday communication, be happy. It indicates that you are outgoing, friendly, casual, and open to others.
Script and Decorative Fonts
We have addressed these already; however, if you are using them in your normal communication, you might just be a person who likes to feel superior to others or to be that “flashy” individual who needs to be noticed.
Getting Specific
Some analysts are getting more specific about personalities and fonts. Here are some of the more recent “findings” of these researchers.
Times New Roman: You are a traditionalist and like things in your life to be neat and well-organized.
Helvetica: You strive for the impression that you’ve “got it all together.”
Comic Sans: You are unprofessional and let your feelings and emotions get the better of you sometimes.
Curlz: You are rather stuck in the past and trying to be too cute – too much bling and shizzle
Lucinda Calligraphy: Pretty much, you are living in the past if you use this font for anything other than invitations and announcements. You long for the days that were more like Victorian England, when men were men and women were real ladies. You may also use your good china every day.
Rockwell: You are a leader at work or at least you want to be. You exude professionalism but just enough “edge” to lead the party night life too.
Futura: One of the oldest typefaces (developed in 1927), but it is still associated with sports and sports enthusiasts
Franklin Gothic: People who want others to trust them use this font. You might be a banker or a financial planner, or at least want to be, if you use this font.
Bradley Hand: You are passive-aggressive. You don’t want to openly confront people when you are angry, so you leave critical notes in a “less angry” font to soften the blow and to not make yourself look like the bad guy.
People who did not like what handwriting analysts had to say about their writing often made a concerted effort to change their writing styles. You can do the same, although researchers say that won’t make a difference. Embrace who you are!
