The charity and fundraising foughts of Ian Atkinson


Monday 9 November 2009

Font of all knowledge



Here’s a head-scratcher for you.

When was the last time you read a printed magazine or newspaper or book where the body copy was in a sans-serif font?

No, I can’t think of when either. Because most use serif fonts. Because in printed, long copy, serif fonts are easier to read.

Which poses an even bigger head-scratcher.

Why have so many branding agencies given their charity clients only sans-serif typefaces to use in their long copy fundraising letters?

Are brand agencies filled with funky young things who only come up with designs that they like, rather than what’s appropriate for their client’s target audience?

Test after test proves that long copy is easier to read in a serif font – the serifs help you recognise the shape of a word more quickly and easily. And if something’s easier to read, it’s more likely to get read. Which tends to help response.

Plus, serif fonts are particularly suitable to charity audiences – people who actually read newspapers and books. People who grew up with serif fonts before Arial took over the world.

And serif fonts have more gravitas than most sans-serif fonts too. When your letter tells a powerful, evocative, heart-wrenching story, the font should help tell that story too. Rather than making your great letter look like a clinical business memo.

So: more easily read, more suitable to the audience and more suitable to the subject. That’s three advantages of a serif font in body copy.

We can thank the branding agencies for the last advantage. Now that they’ve made everyone else use a sans-serif one, use a serif typeface and you’ll stand out from the crowd.

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