"It’s linked to survival on a limbic level. People will pair a typeface or design with safety or danger"
You've heard of wine and food pairing, but have you ever tried pairing wine and type tasting? This is one of the events in Sarah Hyndman’s broad arsenal to gather data and explore consumer perceptions related to typefaces and fonts. For more than 10 years, she has been conducting surveys, events, experiments and research into how they impact taste, smell and other perceptions.
The self-taught graphic designer founded Type Tasting over ten years ago to delve deeper into a topic that had been intriguing her for a long time: Why some typefaces had certain sensory associations. She wanted to find out more about sensory cues in language, imagery and particularly typeface on packaging, and how they can get people to imagine the taste or smell of something.
How non-designers respond to a font
“I started pairing smells with a range of typeface styles. I would match coffee with different styles and bring the senses into the experiments. That became the easiest way to ask non-designers what their response to a font was,” Hyndman says.
Whether they realise it or not, most people instinctively pair typography with tastes and smells, she adds. “It’s linked to survival on a limbic level. People will pair a typeface or design with safety or danger: Will that eat me, or can I eat that?” If, for example, consumers are faced with an angular and spiky typeface on a food product, they will most likely assume it is “dangerous” and might taste sour. If the typeface is curvy and soft, most people will assume the product is creamy and sweet, says Hyndman, stressing that certain cultures might, however, override this instinctive response.
Example of a straight and a curvy, softer typeface.
Importantly for brands, the anticipation and actual experience should be in harmony, with food taste and quality matching the expectations delivered in the typeface and imagery. Hyndman believes that Coca Cola’s typeface delivers what it promises. “It has curvy letters on a red can indicating sweetness and a spiky bit suggesting it is a bit bubbly. One Christmas, Coca Cola produced a white can and received complaints that the coke tasted different, but it was literally just the colour of the can.”
Today's trend away from minimalism
Today's trend is towards more heritage-influenced styles, as nostalgia plays a role in brand storytelling, she says. “We’ve had at least 10 years of visual austerity with minimalist and often geometric typefaces, such as Helvetica and Avant Garde, celebrating Apple, technology and social media. Anything that looks too corporate or too techy is feeling a little out of sync with cultural aspects today. People want to speak to humans and there’s a bit more visual opulence.”
An early example of the trend away from minimalism, according to Hyndman, is Chobani yogurt, which had a very high-tech and minimalist look. It was redesigned with a style influenced by typefaces from the early 20th century, like Windsor, with associations that are friendly and familiar to evoke these sentiments in consumers. This inspired many more rebrands, from food to technology.
Use visual triggers to suggest comfort
Using such a typeface on certain “future” foods could potentially help consumers overcome their reluctance to eat something like crickets, Hyndman ponders. “We could apply different visual triggers that might suggest comfort, trust and familiarity to weird future foods, to make them feel more familiar,” she says. One thing is certain – typefaces have never been more influential or more widespread.
“Historically, you had to go to the typesetter, and for a long time designers were the gatekeepers for typefaces. Now though, there’s such a long font menu, and everybody has access to typefaces. We have a generation with choice, and they are interested. We are seeing the ‘Spotification’ of fonts that has made type exciting for a whole generation who have it at their fingertips.”
A spiky typeface may signal acerbity.
This text is written by Cari Simmons and was originally published in PAPER 8. Images by: Karin Löwencrantz and Shutterstock.