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"When you use a ridiculous font, no one thinks you have a plan."

Well, as it turns out, my love for comedy has led me to a study of fonts. Go figure.
I haven't decided on my exact topic yet, but it will be somewhere in the realm of how typeface can establish (or diminish) credibility in the mind of the user/reader. I have found some good sources on perception of typefaces as well as the connotative meaning of typeface, but I have yet to find anything on my exact interest of how a user/reader uses their perception of typeface in evaluating a text's credibility or trustworthiness. 
I am also very intrigued by how typefaces play a role in everyday life. For example, I have learned (as many tech writing majors may have) that text presented in all caps is harder to process than text that is in upper-lower case. Yet, as I was driving to the driving range today (yeah, I golf, and those words weirdly matched up, but I'm going to let it stand), I noticed that ALL of the important signs were set in all caps. Why? I would like to get to the bottom of this. Granted, I do believe there are justifications for the uppercase in a variety of scenarios, but these signs are placed for very quick information or instruction--every second counts, right?Maybe it's a small thing, but in the back of my head there is this little voice saying "all caps = no good" and yet I see all caps everywhere, in all sorts of official capacities. This not only offends me as a devotee of the order of anti-all caps, it troubles me from a user-centered design standpoint. Why is all this pretty technical communication flaunting the science of all-caps? 

This may have turned into a vent, but I hope that, at the very least, my research will give me some peace of mind that the powers that be know what they're doing with all this all-caps business.

Here's hoping my reading will also help unify my focus.


______________________

A List of Potential Sources:

Brumberger, E. R. (2003). The rhetoric of typography: The awareness and impact of typeface appropriateness. Technical Communication, 50(2), 224.

 

Brumberger, E. R. (2003). The rhetoric of typography: The persona of typeface and text. Technical Communication, 50(2), 206.

 

Degani, A. (1992). On the typography of flight-deck documentation. NASA. (contractor report #177605. Prepared for Ames Research Center Contract NCC2-327, December 1992)

 

Doyle, J. R. & Bottomley, P.A. (2009). The massage in the medium: Transfer of connotative meaning from typeface to names and products. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23(3), 396-409. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1468.

 

Gump, J. E. (2001). The readability of typefaces and the subsequent mood or emotion created in the reader. Journal of Education for Business, 76(5), 270. https://doi.org/10.1080/08832320109599647.

 

Mackiewicz, J. (2003). What technical writing students do know and should know about typography. Proceedings of the IEEE international professional communication conference.https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245492

 

Morrison, Gary R. (1986). Communicability of the emotional connotation of type. Educational Technology Research and Development, 34, 235-244.

 

Moys, J. L. (2017). Visual rhetoric in information design: Designing for credibility and engagement. Information Design: Research and Practice. Black, A., Luna, P., Lund, O., and Walker, S. (Eds) Routledge. New York.

 

Shaikh, A. D. (2007). Psychology of onscreen type: investigations regarding typeface personality, appropriateness, and impact on document perception. (Publication No. d07008) [Doctoral dissertation, Wichita State University]. SOAR. 

 

Spiekermann, E., & E. M. Ginger (2014). Stop stealing sheep and find out how type works (3rd ed.). Adobe Press. 


Sutherland, S.W. (1989). The forgotten research of Miles Albert Tinker. Journal of Visual Literacy, 9(1),10-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/23796529.1989.11674437

 

Warde, B. (1956). The crystal goblet: Sixteen essays on typography (H. Jacob. Ed.). World Publishing Company. 

 

Wong, B. (2011). Points of view: Typography. Nature Methods, 8(4), 277. https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth0411-277.

Comments

  1. Brianna9/15/20, 7:19 AM

    You are a much better person than I am. I was looking at the 10 articles that I had picked and knew that I should cite them using APA, and then thought to myself, "I really don't want to do that right now." And so they are not.

    On another, more research related note. I am actually very interested in your findings. I work a lot with all caps in my work and it drives me nuts to be honest because I hate the switching back and forth between having my CAPS LOCK on and off. Sometimes I even forget I have it on and end up typing in passwords wrong. So I would love to know more about why people choose to use all caps in a professional capacity.

    Also, I love to see that there is so much available research for you to go through. Hopefully that means that you can see where they may or may not have covered your topic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brianna Marie9/15/20, 7:03 PM

    After reflecting on my research and sources thus far, I feel like I should look harder for some more recent pieces. The most recent item I have is from 2016. That isn't too bad, and maybe this is just an issue inherent to my topic. But, I should do more work to try to find the most recent information possible.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dr. Florence Elizabeth Bacabac9/15/20, 10:08 PM

    Hi Brianna,

    Good flow of ideas here as I sense the iterative process of your chosen topic! It looks like you have distilled your interest slowly but surely since we started, so keep it up. =))

    As far as the focus of your topic is concerned, I think the rhetoric of typography is really rife for research, including how rhetorical contexts may have dictated some style guides.

    I look forward to your Lit. Review and maybe later on we can reconnect via Zoom before you design a research method for this valuable topic.

    Best,

    Dr. B

    ReplyDelete

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