Insights:Can Science Make Your Ad Copy Unforgettable?
A few years ago scientists at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia developed a typeface called Sans Forgetica that would help students better remember information they had studied. The clever play on words with the name Sans (without) Forgetica (forgetting + Helvetica) is a pretty big hint as to what the scientists’ intent was.
This multidisciplinary team of specialists used the psychological principle of desirable difficulty to create the typeface. The principle of desirable difficulty means learning something that requires a considerable, but desirable, amount of effort. In layman terms, they invented a typeface that was hard to read.
The Sans Forgetica typeface features gaps and a disruptive flow of the letterforms. This forces the reader to slow down and spend more time with each word allowing the brain more time to engage in deeper cognitive processing.
This seems like an ideal typeface for getting people to remember your marketing headlines and content. But before you start demanding that all your marketing materials are created using this magical, unforgettable super font, there are a couple things to remember.
The first is it is really an ugly font and would certainly not elevate your brand’s style cachet. Another issue is it is intentionally hard to read, and getting consumers to read any marketing message is hard enough without adding scientifically proven difficulty to the process. Perhaps the most discouraging news about this wonder typeface is that peer reviews of the typeface have found no evidence that it aided in learning or memory.
So, until science really cracks the forget-me-not typeface conundrum, we’d recommend you rely on Insight’s designers to select or create a font that best reflects your brand voice and can actually be read.
For more information on design trends and effective marketing tactics call us at 605-275-0011 or send us an email. If you do choose to write us an email, please don’t use Sans Forgetica for the font. Thanks.