Investigating the effects of font styles on perceived visual aesthetics of website interface design

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to compare the effects of the two font styles (serif and sans-serif) on the users' perception of visual aesthetics of website interface design. Two font types were tests in this study, namely: "Time News Roman" representing the "serif" style and "Calibri" representing the "sans-serif" style. They were chosen because they are two of the widely used font types on the web and because they are the default font types of many of the most popular word processing and web developing software. Analysis of results showed that font type has a statistically significant effect on perceived visual aesthetics. The designs with the Time New Roman font was perceived as having better visual aesthetics. However, this effect was only significant on the overall perception of visual aesthetics; it wasn't significant in each of the four facets of visual aesthetics tested in this study. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.