The Font of Wisdom

The headline might read: Restaurants dining out on gullible patrons, but there's more to this story than meets the eye:

RESTAURANTS using fancy typeface on their menus can often get away with fancy prices too with people perceiving complicated font to mean complex food that needs greater skills to prepare.

Researchers at the University of Michigan found people believed if that if the font was harder to read then the task was harder to do.

Looked at the other way, researchers said this meant that clear font was likely to lead to the perception that the task was simple and people were more able to complete it.

For example if you wanted a culinary-challenged spouse to make dinner, giving him or her a recipe in simple font may do the trick as they would see the task as simple and achievable.

The issue identified here is perceived value.

It's true that modern computing has made the most fancy typefaces and fonts as easy to use as more more elaborate styles which would be particularly complex if drawn by hand.

For business it means being particularly aware of your target market. If you are selling high volume, low margin products then making something as quick and easy to read as possible is absolutely vital.

If a product or service is seen as prestige, has a high price tag and is an infrequent purchase, then spending a little extra time in the design of sales material (including the use of fancy fonts) is entirely appropriate.

It's important to effectively brief your agency on the type of market you wish to attract, as well as the types of 'take home' messages you want your clients to receive - all of which impact on the type of design your agency will create.