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Baskerville Is the Greatest Font, Statistically, Says Filmmaker Errol Morris
An anonymous reader writes "A survey of unsuspecting New York Times readers implicitly answered the question: Does a certain font make you agree or disagree more often than another font? It turns out Baskerville confers a 1.5% advantage towards agreement on a survey question, compared to an average of six fonts. They were asked to agree or disagree to a passage from physicist David Deutsch's book The Beginning of Infinity, and were found to have an optimistic, if Baskerville-favoring, outlook on life. David Dunning, a psychologist awarded a Nobel prize and, separately, an IgNobel prize (for the eponymous Dunning-Kruger Effect), called Baskerville 'the king of fonts.' Sadly, Comic Sans — notable for its appearance in the Higgs Boson announcement — seems to be the weakest font. And why did Lisa Randall, the Harvard physicist responsible for that Higgs announcement use Comic Sans? According to the article, 'Because I like it.'"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkoX0pEwSCw
Baskerville: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baskerville
Open Baskerville: http://klepas.org/openbaskerville/
And why did Lisa Randall, the Harvard physicist responsible for that Higgs announcement use Comic Sans? According to the article, 'Because I like it.'"
Given the mostly fixed number of neurons available to any single individual, the talent for physics must have come from somewhere... obviously, the aesthetics circuits got the short end of the deal.
Ezekiel 23:20
and Lisa Randall was not the responsible for the announcement.
Lisa Randall, a Harvard physicist, kindly e-mailed Fabiola Gianotti on my behalf. Gianotti, the coordinator of the CERN program to find the Higgs boson, provided a compelling rationale for why she had used Comic Sans. When asked, she said, “Because I like it.”
Lisa *asked* the responsible.
Oh editors, I miss the times where at least you read the submitted articles. Now the anonymous guy can write whatever he wants in the summary and you'll publish it.
Where are the error bars?
I think that an interesting follow-up study would compare subject matter and typeface pairing. That is, I believe that an article in physics is more likely to be taken seriously if it is set in a typeface (not a font, btw) like Baskerville than in comic sans. But what if you're subject matter is meant to be humorous? I suspect that people find it funnier if it is written in the comic sans than if it is written in Baskerville. Also, what typeface are people accustomed to reading such material in? Experience may play a large factor.
Anyway, it’s an interesting result, all the same. I'm sure the marketers will be thrilled to discover that they could grab another 1.5% if they'd just use the proper type.
The summary misstates the person responsible for using Comic Sans in the Higgs boson announcement. The full quote:
Lisa Randall, a Harvard physicist, kindly e-mailed Fabiola Gianotti on my behalf. Gianotti, the coordinator of the CERN program to find the Higgs boson, provided a compelling rationale for why she had used Comic Sans. When asked, she said, “Because I like it.”
I was already wondering why a Harvard physicist would be making the announcement of a discovery by CERN.
Time to update my resume.
This is probably a result of an occupational hazard, but I know very well that I pay more attention to text typeset in Computer Modern. Even though it is the default font in LaTeX, to that what Times New Roman is to Word.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
I'm really fond of the Dunning-Kruger effect to the point where I mention it almost daily and people get annoyed with me. So I was really surprised to hear the claim in summary that Dunning had a Nobel. What would it be in? The last time a psychologist got a Nobel it was for work related to economics. Sure, enough 10 seconds of fact checking, verified that he's not on any list of Nobel Laureates, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates or the official lists at Nobelprize.org. The claim about Dunning getting a Nobel isn't in TFA so I'm not sure where it came from.
You should send 10M€ to my bank account.
Its really depressing that with all the new fonts, studies of perception, cognition, etc, the greatest font is one that was designed in 1757.
Dyslexia
While not the best, it's decent and by far the most widely available (of the fonts dyslexics find easier to read).
More readable? yes. Agreeable? Apparently not. Save Calibri and Arial for the technical manual but make sure your marketing literature is covered in Baskerville. Maybe since the text is not quite as readable perhaps it slows the reader down to a point where the text seems to be visually "spoken" at a slower pace. People who talk intelligently but at a slightly slower pace tend to draw in their audience and they don't come across as suspicious fast-talkers. Maybe that's the effect that Baskerville is having on the reader. That and Baskerville is most commonly associated with the CANADA wordmark, and what could possibly be more polite, friendly, and agreeable than Canada?
Damnit! I knew Obama shouldn't have written the Affordable Care Act in Comic Sans!
"Yo, Baskerville, I'm really happy for you, and Imma let you finish, but I just got to say Helvetica is one of the best fonts of all time."
I'm a french guy, and I never saw the Baskerville font used in France.
I'm pretty sure that this font has a cultural connotation for english people, but not for the rest of the world.
When one reads a text in Baskerville, one probably unconsciously associates it with ancient books, and with ancient wisdom.
An interesting experience would be to write a "modern" question (using recent words) with Baskerville, and measure its impact.
Damnit! I knew Congress shouldn't have written the Affordable Care Act in Comic Sans!
Fixed that for 'ya. I know you're trying to be funny, but you can be factual at the same time.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
In the Typography course I took, we were taught that the greatest font of all time is Garamond.
It wasn't even tested in this article.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
No, not that one. Or this one.
When I started at a NASA center, working with a bunch of physicists for the most part, I found I was being sent to an AAS (American Astronomical Society) meeting. I don't remember exactly what my boss said that was disparaging about astronomers, but I do remember he said something to the effect, 'but at least they're not mathmeticians, as they generally bathe at least once a week'.
So, just remember -- they might've been cleaning themselves out of the sink -- but at least they were cleaning themselves.
(and well, during undergrad, I think I had a period of about 10-14 days when I don't think I went above ground ... at least not when the sun was out (and it was summer) ... the problem is, you can't tell just how ripe you've managed to get ... so engineers aren't always the best group, either).
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
An odd trend I noticed while going through the public school system is that every science teacher I ever had used Comic Sans--including two professors in college. The plural of anecdote is not data, but somehow I'm not surprised that Lisa Randall, a physicist, likes Comic Sans.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Comic Sans is utterly despised by anybody who cares about fonts, but for everybody else it's just another option that they can choose if they feel like it. Lisa Randall is in the latter group, she's too busy discovering the secrets of the universe to care what font would win her the most esteem among people who give a shit about fonts.
I read the internet for the articles.
The study only used 6 fonts. Calibri and arial were not studied, so they could turn out to be even more agreeable than baskerville.