Who me? It depends.

vertical-fontsChoosing a Font

What font I use depends on what I’m doing and what I’m trying to communicate. Whether I’m crafting or writing (which technically is also a craft), I’m communicating.

There’s a lot of information out there about typography. There’s even personality quizzes to help you determine what font you are. Which confuses me, because I don’t think that’s the purpose of fonts.

Fonts help us communicate effectively

Even in our most artistic moments, we’re trying to convey an emotion, an energy, or, if nothing else, our enthusiasm for the subject matter. Many times we can do this without typography.  However, when we do add type (or handwriting) to our creative works, we want them to work with what we’re trying to communicate, not against it.

Given that, I don’t see how I can be just one font. In business, or in how-to, I want to project confidence and professionalism.  I also want to make sure my readers eyes don’t get tired. For that purpose I might choose a basic font.  (I might also just go with the one that the website platform provides.)

On a scrapbook page, I might choose something much more moody. For my teenagers, I might go with grunge (obvious choice, if you know my teenage boys) but for genealogy I might choose a traditional script.

Design writer Rich Poyner seems to agree with me. He’s quoted as saying, “Type is saying things to us all the time. Typefaces express a mood, an atmosphere.” However, he also has the quiz, to tell me what font my personality is.

Who-Am-IWhat Font Are You Quiz Results

To try to figure out what font I am, I took some of the quizzes. Here are the results that I will be forwarding to my therapist.

Quibblos – Arial, a “regular person” not perfect, just good.  (Yes, it said that–couldn’t just leave it at “Arial”)

Buzzfeed – Helvetica

Rick Poynor – Times New Roman

Notice first, that they don’t agree. What’s worse though, it that they are all very basic unexciting fonts. Hmmm. (My therapist might disagree about the “normal” part.)

My advice: Let your communication, rather than your personality determine what personality you are.

© Laura Hedgecock 2013

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This