You’ve just been asked to create an identity package for a company; not only are you creating the company logo, you are also creating their letterhead, miscellaneous documentation, brochures, and other artifacts. In addition to considering the visual consistency of deliverables you will produce, you must also determine how to convey the organization’s personality through your documents’ designs. Karen A. Schriver writes “The design of a document can influence a person’s perception of the design of products and services. Good document design plays a positive role in how people think and feel about products and services” (358). One aspect of designing the documents for your client is selecting typefaces that are appropriate not only to the purpose of the document but also to the personality of the company.

How do you begin to select a typeface that conveys the right personality? Do you depend on your intuition—on what you presume to be the ‘feel’ of the typeface? Do you rely on trends and investigate what typefaces similar organizations—or those that have a desirable reputation—use? Whatever you do, it will probably involve piecing together whatever approaches and rhetorical skills you have in order to make a good decision, because there is no how-to manual—or even much theoretical literature—written about how typeface conveys personality. A small number of empirical studies have been conducted regarding the personality of typefaces (Brumberger; Mackiewicz & Moeller); Eva R. Brumberger notes, “The existing research on typography has focused primarily on readability and legibility issues; only a handful of studies have attempted to investigate the personas of typefaces perhaps because typography has generally been considered transparent.” Brumberger also claims that “in scholarly discussions of visual communication, typography has been largely ignored.”

Since there has been little research or scholarly discussion on how to select typefaces that convey organizational personality, I suspect that we must draw from a variety of approaches in order begin discovering how to best go about it. Therefore, I will explore some possible approaches to understanding typeface personality, including empirical research and scholarly discussion, in the hopes of generating more discussion about how we can understand and use typeface personality when creating organizational identity packages.

Empirical Studies on Typeface Personality

Jo Mackiewicz and Rachel Moeller “contend that technical communicators can and should make decisions about typography, especially typeface personality, that are research-driven” (304). Research has shown us how people read documents (Redish; Shriver) so similar research should help us discover how people interpret typeface personality.

However, as noted earlier, few studies have been conducted on the personality or mood of typeface: “Many articles suggest that type conveys mood, but they usually stop at this point—failing to connect mood to genre, purpose, and context” (Schriver 287). Schriver describes a study in which readers were asked to look at and respond to documents in four different genres reflecting four purposes: to enjoy, assess, do, and learn to do (290-291). Two documents in each category were given to readers for evaluation—one in a serif font and one in a sans serif font. Schriver and her colleagues found that how readers interpreted the mood or tone of the different fonts depended on the type of document being read. For example, in a manual a readers commented that “sans serif type makes the text ‘seem easy’ while in a story, “the dark type seems ‘gloomy’” (Schriver 299).

While Schriver’s study focuses on a broader range of typography issues than that of typeface personality, her findings indicate that typeface preference may be related to the purpose of the document. While this may be obvious when considering whether to write a business letter in Comic Sans or Times New Roman, it may be more subtle when choosing between writing the same letter in Book Antiqua or Palatino Linotype. In other words, when choosing between appropriate typefaces, our decisions become even more difficult.

Mackiewicz and Moeller recognize the difficulty in choosing among appropriate typefaces: “people would benefit from simple guidelines that would help them analyze typefaces so that they could match a particular typeface to an intended rhetorical effect for their document” (309). The researchers conducted a study in which they asked writing students to assess fifteen typefaces based on personality traits assigned by the researchers. The participants rated the personality of the typefaces using a Likert scale; for example they might have rated how technical a typeface appeared on a scale from one to seven—one being not at all technical and seven being very technical (307). While Mackiewicz and Moeller’s research indicates that certain typeface attributes are linked to particular personas—such as ease of reading being connected to a ‘technical’ persona (309)—many of their findings suggest that participants’ assignments of particular personas to typefaces depend on when and where they have seen that typeface before.

Mackiewicz and Moeller also found that “participants’ comments suggest that people intuitively distinguish among typefaces and the personalities they convey, but that they distinguish among personalities in a fairly unprincipled manner, using intuition” (311). They do note, however, that they did not require participants to analyze anatomical features of the typefaces, which might have caused the more intuitive approach to the evaluations. Although participants relied on their tuition for designating typeface persona, the researchers “hope to help technical communication professionals and students to go beyond using intuition to select typefaces…[they] hope to help them analyze the anatomical features of typefaces so that they can select a typeface that best contributes to the rhetorical effect they intend” (312).

Eva R. Brumberger is possibly the most prevalent contributor to discussions of typeface personality—in fact Mackiewicz and Moeller refer to her often in their discussion of their own studies. One of Brumberger’s studies “investigated whether readers/viewers consistently assign particular personality attributes to particular typefaces.” She notes: “Knowing the reasoning behind readers' persona judgments of typefaces and text passages would certainly enrich our understanding of visual and verbal rhetoric and thereby allow for more effective decision-making as we design and write.”

Brumberger’s participants also consistently attributed the same personality to a particular typeface; however, these personalities were different from previous studies on typeface and persona (both conducted in 1982). Brumberger notes that perhaps the most significant reason for this difference is that “both previous studies were conducted two decades ago”; she continues, “it is reasonable to expect that perceptions of typeface persona would change with time and usage if they are shaped by experiences.” Brumberger’s comments are similar to those made by Schriver, Mackiewicz, and Moeller: they all indicate that the personality attributes participants assign to typefaces depend on their previous experiences with those typefaces.

If the assessments of variability made by Brumberger, Schriver, Mackiewicz, and Moeller are accurate, then studies such as theirs would have to be conducted relatively frequently—especially if the goal is to assist designers in making educated typeface selection. Furthermore, research would have to be conducted on a variety of subjects in order to attain accurate information about a range of audiences.

Of course, while research is useful for discovering how people ascribe personality to typeface, it is not the only possibility. In the following section I will explore some discussions on discourse communities and audience analysis that be helpful when selecting typefaces to express an organizations personality.

To Whom Are We Writing? Considering Questions of Audience

As Brumberger notes, few scholarly discussions specifically address typeface selection; but perhaps one can draw from general theories of visual communication and audience analysis when considering this issue. As indicated by the empirical research in the previous section, one approach a designer might take to creating identity is considering what the audience has already encountered. If readers draw from a variety of experiences when associating personality with a typeface, the problem for designers becomes how to determine what those past experiences are. In other words one must figure out how to relate to her audiences past, or speak to what that audience wants to become (Ong; Gibson).

Some approaches to communicating with and understanding readers derive from the notion that we must—to varying degrees—fictionalize our audience in order to communicate to them. Central to this idea is the fact that we have no way of adapting our communication strategies to audience reactions during the communication act because we are not in the same place as our audience when they view our work. Walter J. Ong writes:

For the speaker, the audience is in front of him. For the writer, the audience is simply further away, in time or space or both. If […] we put aside this alluring but deceptively neat and mechanistic mock-up and look at verbal communication in its human actuality, noting that words consist not of corpuscular units but of evanescent sound and that […] words are never fully determined in their abstract signification but have meaning only with relation to man’s body and to its interaction with its surroundings, problems with the writer’s audience begin to show themselves (10).

Ong’s views on audience indicate that readers interpret text based on their previous experience and their present surroundings; conversely, for a speaker, rhetorical decisions are often based on immediate audience reaction—something that is not possible for a writer (or a designer). Therefore, the writer must address a fictionalized audience—one based on the writer’s assessment of what their audience wants to read. Furthermore, the reader must agree to play the role that the writer has created for her. This complicates the notion of audience analysis even further because we must not only figure out how the audience must interpret what we write, but we must create a situation in which the reader will want to participate.

The questions of audience analysis and fictionalizing readers can lead to discussions that go beyond the scope of this paper. However, Mary B. Coney’s observations on audience may assist us in seeing where theorists fit audience analysis into their writing and design processes. “What becomes clear […] is that conceptions of audience cannot be separated from conceptions about the writing process, invention, language, and knowledge itself” (Coney 334). She notes that we must not simply think of the audience as a recipient of information because it ignores “the contemporary definitions of rhetoric and science.” Instead, we must consider them at every step of the writing or designing process. Similarly, we too should keep issues of how writers and designers communicate with their audiences in mind as we explore the issue of conveying personality through typeface.

Conventions and Communities: Interpreting Information

We must constantly consider how our audience will interpret the information that we present, even if we are communicating with a fictionalized version of our target audience. Still the question remains: how do we determine what roles our readers want to play? Or (if you prefer to think of your audience as more grounded in the ‘real’ world) how do we determine the standards by which our audience will interpret our designs? One possibility is by exploring the codes or conventions that drive readers’ interpretations. Charles Kostelnick and Michael Hassett write “codes [of design language] are controlled by the communities that use them, and how these communities vary in their size and constitution” (10). They continue, “because designers use their artifacts to communicate with audiences to achieve certain ends, design is inherently rhetorical…and because design ‘rolls around’ and socializes those artifacts among complex audiences, typically meeting audience expectations about form and purpose, design is also inherently conventional” (11). In other words, in creating visual communication, a designer balances her needs to convey a particular message (rhetorical) with her knowledge of the audience and the ways that audience is used to seeing information (convention).

Kostelnick and Hassett’s notions of conventions—or those visual elements or strategies that seem to stay consistent over time—could be very useful for selecting typefaces with the appropriate personality. However, like the research findings discussed earlier, the conventions change over time. “The factors […] that shape conventions—discourse community, rhetorical, and external practical—also eventually undo them. If an organization dwindles in its membership, is absorbed into a larger organization, or disbands, its conventional language will likely disappear” (Kostelnick and Hassett 148).

If conventions continuously change, how can we use them when visually communicating organizational identity? Kostelnick and Hassett offer one possibility:

Depending on the discourse communities that sustain them, some of those works-in-progress may evolve more quickly than others: A designer using the conventions of a discipline will probably stand on firmer ground than one using those of a dotcom company. Designers who understand that difference can flexibly develop documents with appropriate kairos by selecting conventions that match the rhetorical moment […] Conventions differ in both their life spans and their genealogies, and accounting for those differences can effectively guide practice (162).

If there are different levels of convention—or various pools of conventions from which our audience draws—the designer’s goal becomes more specific, yet more complicated. She must determine from what type of convention her audience may be drawing their interpretation, and therefore she must sharpen her skills for recognizing the various types of convention. In other words, a designer must be able to recognize the context in which she is working; she must be able to effectively assess her rhetorical situation a nd determine from which conventions she might work in order to match a typeface with the emotional connections of her audience.

Kostelnick and Hassett’s discussion of conventions contributes yet another piece to the question of how readers interpret typeface personality—and thus how designers successfully select typefaces to convey an organization’s character. Primarily, their discussion informs us that people draw from a variety of conventions—that change at various paces—when interpreting information; the designers job is to determine which convention they which to invoke in their audience. Furthermore, their discussion reiterates the fact that audience’s perspectives will change over time. A pattern seems to be emerging, but a discussion on typeface personality would be incomplete without voices from typography; therefore, in the next section I will address some issues of how typeface designers view these ever-changing conventions.

Historicizing Typographic Design: Technology and Cultural Change

Typographer Hermann Zapf notes the importance of using typefaces appropriate for the time and space in which the design is situated, and in many ways attributes changes to typeface design can be attributed to changes in technology: “The role of type designers, past and present, has always been to serve the demands of existing equipment” (Zapf 11). As equipment changes, the typefaces must remain appropriate for the time: “Pure copies of such historic faces as the sixteenth-century Garamond clash with the computer age, not just technologically but also stylistically. To use them in software is just as inappropriate as it would be to deck out our office computers with Renaissance ornaments and embellish the monitors with naked cherubs on the top and stately Greek columns on either side” (Zapf 10). The same can be said for the personalities the typefaces connote. Garamond might have been the latest craze in the five hundred years ago, but today it might connotes a classic, old fashioned personality.

Of course, this change in interpretation can occur at a much faster pace than indicated by the example of Garamond. Furthermore, as we learned from Kostelnick and Hassett, we must not only consider changing interpretations when considering how to convey personality to our audiences, but also that each audience member draws from a different variety of discourse conventions when interpreting the typeface.

Like other forms of visual communication, typographic design often reflects greater cultural movements that extend beyond technological change. For example, Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller note that modernist typefaces often sought to defamiliarize—or force viewers to see the everyday differently (58) and post-structuralist typefaces “have exchanged the clean, mechanical paradigm of structuralism for a model that merges biology and technology” (61). Lupton and Miller make these comments in an essay charting “a shift from the humanist understanding of printed letters as reflections of handwritten marks or classical proportions toward the modernist view of typography as the endless manipulation of abstract elements” (53). Furthermore they note: “’Design history’ should be understood not as a catalogue of styles or a canon of formal rules, but as a complex enterprise that engages political, economic, and intellectual culture” (62).

So, while technological change can influence changes in typographic design, the field is also influenced by the same conventions that Kostelnick and Hassett discuss. Of course, there is a difference in being the one who designs the typeface and the one who selects which typeface to use; however in both cases you might draw from the general notions of the time in order to best communicate your message to your audience. But—especially in a time when information is plentiful and a variety of communities offer conventions—how do we determine from which conventions to draw?

Adjusting to the Pace: Information Design or Designing Information?

Globalization and fast-paced information have contributed to even more adjustments as to how we must try to convey information. Dino Karabeg proposes a method to accommodate these fast-paced changes. First, he proposes that we rename information design designing information. One distinction Karabeg makes between traditional design and designing information is the difference between evolution and design. Karabeg approaches the differences as illustrated below:

These adaptations of Karabeg’s ideas aren’t intended to be seen as progressions; rather, the lines illustrate the connections between the concepts. Karabeg’s models emphasize the notion that in an increasingly fast-paced world, designers must consciously create the context in which their designs are situated. In other words, instead of relying only on what the audience has encountered in the past, the designer creates the world through which the audience will contextualize information. Thus, instead of focusing on how to best accommodate the audience by addressing a particular convention, a designer creates a convention within the context of their design; it is up to the audience to interpret the designer’s intent.

Gunther Kress and Theo Van Leeuwen contribute yet another slightly different vision of conventions and discourse. Kress and Van Leeuwen define discourses as “socially situated forms of knowledge about (aspects of) reality.” They continue, “People often have several alternative discourses available with respect to a particular aspect of reality. They will then use the one that is most appropriate to the interests of the communication situation in which they find themselves” (20-21). Most of the studies and discussions in this paper indicate that associations between typeface and persona may derive in part from viewers’ previous associations between that typeface and the genres or situations in which they have seen them. The difference in Kress and Van Leeuwen’s perspectives seems to be that the reader is more active in their model: he draws from whichever discourse he feels fit in order to interpret the personality or mood of the document. In other words, the personality attributed to any one typeface might derive from any one of the reader’s previous experiences with it—but the reader decides what experience that may be (similarly to the way the reader decides to play their fictionalized role in Ong’s theory). So, while the designer has the power to select the appropriate typeface, the reader’s participation is active—even if that active participation occurs on a subconscious level.

Taking Karabeg and Kress and Van Leeuwen’s assertions into consideration, selecting a typeface to properly convey personality may be best seen as an inexact science: we cannot expect to always come up with the best solution. What we can do is estimate what is most likely the most appropriate typeface for the situation and allow our audience to make connections and draw from appropriate discourses in order to identify the personality. In fact, if we presume to know that we might be able to select exactly the correct typeface for the interpretation we’re after does that mean that we are presuming that our audience acts merely out of reaction—that they cannot make decisions or connections for themselves? (see Spinuzzi). On the other hand, placing some agency in the audience does not remove the designer’s agency: designers are still responsible for playing their part in effective communication.

What now?

In the search for ways to effectively convey organizational personality through typeface, we have looked at theories from perspectives of empirical research, audience analysis, typography, visual rhetoric, and multimodal communication. While each of these theories is founded on the notion that in order to effectively design information we must understand how our audience interprets that information, they also have their distinct differences. For example, one might be troubled with attempts at combining empirical approaches like the research studies of Brumberger and Mackiewicz and Moeller with more humanistic approaches presented by Ong and Kostelnick and Hassett.

Still, though many of these approaches are epistemologically different, my intentions in this paper are not to emphasize these differences; instead, I will draw from all available approaches in order to find a way to convey personality through typeface. I don’t think we can deny that the theorists are correct when they point out that individuals’ attitudes about any particular approach to writing depends on individual and cultural contexts that change over time. However, should this belief keep us from using the tools available to us when involved in a project? If one is inclined toward a humanistic approach to information design, should she have to disregard studies like those by Brumberger or Schriver? I think not.

Kostelnick and Hassett point out that we must be able to recognize the best way to act in a given rhetorical moment. Part of this enactment of kairos is using the tools available in order to do that. We can use our rhetorical skills to determine when it’s best to apply tried-and-true historical approaches (like Karabeg’s tradition) and asynchronic approaches (like Karabeg’s design); or when it’s best to draw from empirical or humanistic methods.

Another lesson we can learn from the presented theories is that we must keep in mind any evidence we gather from research, and any decisions we make about cultural conventions, is temporary. For example, Mackiewicz and Moeller call for further research in their article about typeface and persona, especially in the nature of attributing anatomical features of typeface to audience assignments of persona. Such research could be very useful in determining how to effectively convey personality through typeface as long as it is used with the knowledge that that the results will change over time—as Brumberger, Kostelnick and Hassett, and others point out. In fact, as long as the community being studied is intact, empirical research can be done within that community in order to build a picture of the discourse changing over time (Kostelnick and Hassett 230-31).

Even if conventions erode over time, they exist for a while. Therefore, designers can rely on useful tools for some time as long as they continue to evaluate them. With this in mind, I would like to return to the original question: how do select a typeface that evokes a certain mood to our audience? Based on the information presented in this paper, I offer a few suggestions:

• Review the Research. You might find that recent research has been conducted on a typeface or a closely related typeface that might be useful in your decision-making process.
• Examine other documents and organizations within your target community. What typefaces have been used? What mood do the organizations using those typefaces portray? By observing the designs of other organizations, you might become familiar with the conventions from which your audience draws.
• Consider the documents you are producing. Although identity packaging requires a connection between all visual elements and documents within the organization, you must consider that a particular typeface might evoke different moods depending on the documents in which they’re used (Schriver).
• Review the organization’s previous identities and/or documentation. Has the organization changed identities over time? Have they attempted to change their image? What seems to work for them? Knowing the history of your organization’s identity can help you understand both the organization’s personality (see Shirk) and the ways they’ve successfully (or unsuccessfully) appealed to their audience in the past—in other words, you can understand the discourse communities to which they’ve belonged over time.
• Determine what type of status your company wants to project. If the organization is looking for a more classic personality, you might want to look to more historically standard typefaces; if they want to be cutting edge, you might not want to draw from similar organizations, but focus instead on ‘cutting edge’ organizations in other fields.
• Remember that your audience and your identity package are not permanent. Even if the same people are looking at the identity package for several years, outside influences will change their way of interpreting the design you have selected. Furthermore, the design must change over time in order to keep up with the changing attitudes/interpretations of your audience.

Undoubtedly there are plenty of additional suggestions for selecting typefaces to convey an organization’s persona; the key is not limiting oneself to a particular approach. Instead, use the available tools in order to create the most appropriate design.

More important than the above suggestions is this: that the conversation about typeface personality continues. As Brumberger and Mackiewicz and Moeller note, more research should be conducted on how typeface conveys personality; additionally we should also have more scholarly discussions on the matter. After all, the key to understand this and other design problems might lie in continuously probing them and discovering new methods as new conventions emerge.

Works Cited

Brumberger, Eva. “The Rhetoric of Typography: The Persona of Typeface and Text.” Technical Communication 50.2 (May 2003): 206-223. InfoTrac Web: Expanded Academic ASAP. Iowa State University Library. 10 Apr. 2005. .

Coney, Mary B. “Contemporary Views of Audience: A Rhetorical Perspective.” The Technical Writing Teacher, 14.3 (1987): 319-335.

Gibson, Walker. “Authors, Speakers, Readers, and Mock Readers.” College English 11 (Feb. 1950): 265-69. Rpt. in Reader-Response Criticism from Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Ed. Jane P. Tompkins. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1980. 1-6.

Karabeg, Dino. “Designing Information Design.” Information Design Journal 11.1 (2002): 82-90.

Kostelnick, Charles and Michael Hassett. Shaping Information: The Rhetoric of Visual Communication. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2003.

Kress, Gunther and Theo Van Leeuwen. Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold, 2001.

Lupton, Ellen and J. Abbott Miller. Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design. London: Phaidon Press Ltd., 1999.

Mackiewicz, Jo and Rachel Moeller. “Why People Perceive Typefaces to Have Different Personalities.” Professional Communication Conference, 2004. IPCC 2004. International. (29 Sept.-1 Oct. 2004): 304-13. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. Iowa State University Library. 10 Apr. 2005. .

Ong, Walter J. “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction.” PMLA 90 (1975): 9-21.

Schriver, Karen A. Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers. New York: Wiley Computer Publishing, 1997.

Shirk, Henrietta Nickels. “Researching the History of Technical Communication: Accessing and Analyzing Corporate Archives.” STC Conference Proceedings. 2000. . Rpt. in Teaching Technical Communication: Critical Issues for the Classroom. Ed. James M. Dubinsky. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. 128-38.

Spinuzzi, Clay. Tracing Genres through Organizations: A Sociocultural Approach to Information Design. Acting with Technology Series. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2003.

Zapf, Hermann and John Dreyfus. Classical Typography in the Computer Age. Los Angeles: The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA, 1991.

Special thanks to Amanda Metz Bemer for helping me with my title.