Communicability of the emotional connotation of type

Abstract

The communicabllity of the emotional connotation of type was investigated in this study. Typographers, student instructional technologists, and naive readers rated 30 typefaces using a semantic differential scale. The results indicated that different typefaces arouse similar results in different subject groups, and that different subject groups agree on the emotional connotations of typefaces. The agreement of these results with previous studies suggests the use of typeface connotation as a variable in typeface selection. © 1986 Association for Educational Communications and Technology.