A new yoga studio has a lovely brand. Its logo and headings are set in a flowing, handwritten script that feels calm and graceful. The owner likes it so much that she uses the same script everywhere: on her class timetable, her beginners’ guide and her online sign-up form.
Enquiries are healthy, but fewer people than expected complete the sign-up. When a friend tests the form, she gently points out that she had to squint to read the instructions, and that the beginners’ guide looked far more complicated than the classes actually are.
Typefaces are one of the most visible parts of a brand system, and most businesses choose them for how they look: elegant, modern, playful, serious. That’s important. But research suggests that how easy a font is to read can also change how easy people expect the task it describes to be, and whether they’re willing to try it at all.
One Like insight: If something is hard to read, customers assume it will be hard to do.
Hard to read, hard to do
In 2008, Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz of the University of Michigan published a short report in Psychological Science with a self-explanatory title: “If It’s Hard to Read, It’s Hard to Do”.
In one study, students read identical instructions for an exercise routine. Half saw them in a plain, easy-to-read font, Arial. The other half saw them in Brush, a decorative script that’s harder to read. Those reading the plain font estimated the routine would take about 8.2 minutes; those reading the script estimated nearly twice as long, 15.1 minutes. They also felt the exercise would drag on, and were less willing to make it part of their daily routine. In a second study, a recipe printed in a hard-to-read font seemed to take longer and require more skill to make.
The researchers’ explanation is that people misread the effort of reading the instructions as a sign of how much effort the task itself would take. Crucially, memory for the details didn’t differ, so the font didn’t change what people understood. It changed how hard they expected things to be.
The original studies were small, around 20 students each, and the effects should be treated as illustrative rather than precise. But they belong to a much larger body of research on processing fluency, which we explored in Plain Language Isn’t Dumbing Down. The broad finding is consistent: when information feels easy to process, people tend to see the thing it describes as easier, more familiar and more appealing.
When harder can help
There’s an interesting twist. In a later article, Song and Schwarz noted that the same effect could sometimes work in a business’s favour. Because a dish described in a hard-to-read font seemed to require more time and skill, a restaurant might use an elegant, more elaborate font on its menu to suggest craftsmanship. The same font on a recipe card meant to encourage people to cook at home would have the opposite effect.
That points to a useful principle for brand systems: choose typefaces according to the job they need to do.
When you want people to act, keep it easy. Sign-up forms, booking pages, instructions, price lists, terms, emails asking for something and anything a customer must read to take a next step should use a clear, legible typeface at a comfortable size.
When you want to signal craft or occasion, a more expressive font can help. Logos, headings, menus at a special-occasion restaurant, packaging for premium products and invitations can carry more personality, as long as they stay short.
Never mix the jobs up. The most common mistake is letting a decorative brand font spread into places where people need to read, understand and act quickly.
Many brand systems handle this by pairing two typefaces: an expressive one for headlines and identity, and a highly legible one for everything else.
[Infographic placement] Same instructions, different fonts. Two cards showing identical exercise instructions. Left, in a plain font: “Estimated time: 8.2 minutes.” Right, in a decorative script: “Estimated time: 15.1 minutes.” Beneath, a simple rule: Expressive font for identity · Clear font for action. Caption: Song and Schwarz (2008), Psychological Science.
Checking your typefaces
Go through the places where customers read something before taking an action: your booking page, sign-up form, quotes, price list, instructions and important emails. Look at each on a phone as well as a computer. Is the main text set in a clear, comfortable typeface and size? Or has a decorative brand font crept in?
If your brand guidelines only specify one typeface, consider adding a second, highly readable one for body text and anything people need to act on. Write down clearly where each should be used, so anyone creating materials for the business gets it right. As we explored in A Brand System Is a Recipe, Not a Rulebook, a good system makes the right choice the easy one.
A few questions can help:
- Where do customers read something before deciding to act?
- Are those places set in a clear, legible typeface at a comfortable size?
- Does our decorative font appear anywhere it might make things seem harder than they are?
- Do our brand guidelines say which typeface to use for which job?
Which brings us back to the yoga studio and its graceful script. The logo and headings can keep their calm, flowing style. But a clear, simple font for the timetable, the beginners’ guide and the sign-up form would make the classes look exactly as approachable as they really are, and probably help more beginners take the step of booking.
Sources
- Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz, “If It’s Hard to Read, It’s Hard to Do: Processing Fluency Affects Effort Prediction and Motivation”, Psychological Science 19(10), 2008.
- Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz, “If it’s easy to read, it’s easy to do, pretty, good, and true”, The Psychologist 23(2), 2010. Source of the figures and the restaurant-menu point.
