Why Fonts Matter: a multisensory analysis of typography and its influence from graphic designer and academic Sarah Hyndman

A very fun and interesting read, I’d never looked at type this way before and it has helped open my eyes to this which will benefit my knowledge and understanding so much more! Highly recommend!!

Sarah Hyndman’s book is amazing! I have recently been preparing two sessions of lectures and workshops on hand-made typography based on poetry for school and university students, so I thought it was high time I got hold of a copy of this book.I was more than eager to find out more about Sarah’s extensive research by experiment on how type can set the mood, reveal one’s personality and appeal to our senses. I was especially intrigued by Sarah’s innovative approach of looking at the type ‘sideways’, which is similarly how people respond emotionally to works of art through sensory perceptions without knowing the context. Who would have thought that type can cry, laugh, shout, smell, and can be sad or happy, or even aggressive or calm?I love in particular the section on the edible type, as that is exactly the kind of idea my two workshops will emphasise: the importance of bringing life skills from all areas into the design process. I often hear kids asking, 'why do I need to learn this or that, it's of no use, it's so boring, whatever!' With such an excellent book on hand that shows everything from the punk and grunge to the neat and tidy, they may perhaps believe me when I say that design is important!

Unassumingly titled, this book is the first scientific survey of how people react to different typefaces. It is based on extensive testing by TypeTaster via its website, and harnesses the power of crowdsourcing and the web to get a real measure of what type says to different people. It makes every previous, opinion-based, book on what fonts mean more or less obsolete.These days, almost everyone knows that Helvetica is neutral, Comic Sans degrades what you write, and Futura looks futuristic. However, if you search the web, or buy a lot of books, all it comes down to for the most part is opinion. There are a few journal articles about the impacts of different typefaces, but these are mainly by psychologists not typographers, and they don't really go beyond the system fonts. U&lc: Influencing Design and Typography will give you a lot of opinions by expert typographers, but they are still opinions, and they very much reflect the year in which the articles were written. Likewise, The Geometry of Type: The Anatomy of 100 Essential Typefaces will tell you a lot about the features of each font, and make some recommendations, but the recommendations are, again, just opinions.I came across Sarah Hyndman's site by accident. I had been looking for a few years for someone to do extensive testing on the web of different typefaces. I was on the point of commissioning a psychologist to set it up. Hyndman has already done it. You can go to her site and take part in the quizzes, and then see what everyone else has said—or you can buy this book, and get all of her research (to date) in one pleasantly digestible volume. (Quite literally—there are font cooking recipes at the end, for what fonts 'taste like').In some ways this book is just the beginning. About 120 typefaces are discussed in the book, in varying levels of detail. There are clearly thousands more that could be looked at. Hyndman's tests and quizzes are wide-ranging, but there are many more questions which could be answered. With her survey based approach, though, it is now possible to dramatically expand our understanding of what typefaces do to different people in different cultures, far beyond her original questions. I look forward to a Volume II, III and so on as the work progresses.Sarah Hyndman has taken typography an enormous step towards becoming a science.

This book is everything I hoped it would be. It is packed with interesting and useful information, presented beautifully (as you would expect from a book about typefaces). But the best bit, for me, is that it makes the topic fun and exciting. If you didn't know you were interested in typography already, then you definitely will be after reading this book.

A very interesting overview of Fonts and what they say about your company and prodcuts

If your into type you’ll enjoy this book. I don’t doubt you’ll find yourself paraphrasing bits when discussing client work.Enjoy

Loved it! Really useful book with loads of interesting things about fonts that I didn't know. As a graphic designer, it's always good to read around a subject - and this was definitely one of the better reads! I would read it again in a heartbeat.

Nice feeling and touch. Great quality for an excellent graphic book.

This interesting book was in every museum bookstore on our most recent trip. I flipped through it and could see why. It is interesting as can be.

Every Designer must buy and read this to find something interesting about fonts.

you can learn a lot from this

Wenn man ein entspannend geschriebenes neueres Buch zum Thema digitale Schriftzeichen sucht, finde ich es super.

Comparisons of fonts. Explains in which way fonts are expressive.