The Persuasive Power of Typography

This is fascinating. I was just catching up on one of my favorite blogs, Neuromarketing, and I read about a recent scientific study that tested the theory that the simpler the typeface in an advertisement or marketing piece, the more persuasive the it will be. Their hypothesis was that the simpler a person thought an exercise regimen would be, the more likely they would be to do it. Fair enough.

To test this hypothesis, they split the sample into two groups, one that read the exercise regimen in a simple typeface, and one that read it in a more complex, script font. The result? The group that read it in the simple font thought the exercise would take about 8 minutes, and the script group thought it would take 15.

I can't restate Neuromarketing's takeaway any better than they did, so I'll let them take it from here:

"if you need to convince a customer, client, or donor to perform some kind of task, you should describe that task in a simple, easy to read font. Since this phenomenon is related to the concept of cognitive fluency, you should also make the type size easy to read and use simple words and sentence structure. These steps will minimize the perceived effort needed to accomplish the task, and your success rate will increase."

by Garret Ohm

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Citroen, All Shiny And New

Citroen makes a distinctly beautiful vehicle, although most Americans don’t know much about them unless they’re into rally racing. That’s because Citroen, a French manufacturer, has never been officially imported into the US market. 

They recently refreshed their global brand identity in order to modernize the brand and to ensure that it has appeal to style-conscious auto buyers. As you’ll see from the before/after image (graciously borrowed from Brand New), the French brand has ditched the hard lines and standard sans serif typeface for a new futuristic typeface and a rounder, softer, more 3-dimensional chevron shape (thanks Brand New for the image).

What I like so much about this brand identity update is that they took an existing identity that had remained unchanged since 1985 and redeveloped it entirely while still managing to preserve the brand equity by taking cues from the old one, including the trademark red, white and silver color scheme.

Here’s a video that Citroen produced to introduce the new brand. I don’t know French, but it’s interesting nonetheless. And I learned that vroom is the same in English and French: