Typography Experimentation

I wanted to conduct a small experiment into the effectiveness of type in advertising. One widely used marketing technique is SALE banners, used by pretty much every retailer, and a quick google search shows that the type used within these banners are pretty consistent- a bold, sans serif style font with a red background, regardless of whether the font fits with the brand's visual identity or not.

I tried to use different fonts within a simple sale poster and judge the effectiveness of the posters. Clearly a few work better than others, and generally sans serif is the best way of conveying a message via print (physical and digital). However, there are certain alterations of the font definitely help in its effectiveness.

I decided to break down the reasoning behind this consistent typography using research found from secondary sources, using quotes as back-up.

Boldness
Boldness may have a more negative meaning. It may be made to mean ‘domineering’, ‘overbearing’.” (Van Leeuwen, 2006, pp. 148)

Simplicity
'If your message is direct and straightforward, use a rigid typeface without any ornaments (Li, 2009). The simplistic font will match the simplistic nature of the context — thus increasing fluency'

Bold
Oosterhout (2013) also found that uppercase letters are effective for “hero” brands that convey qualities related to energy, courageousness, and focus

Sans Serif

'Audiences perceive sans serif fonts as clean and simplistic in a modern way. They allow the message to speak for itself without hiding behind a façade—straight and to the point in an objective way. Sans serif fonts are typically used in digital design, so they carry a reputation for being contemporary and current no matter what decade you use them in'. (Gendelman,2015)

Putting this all together it seems that the aim of the sale banners is to be dominating and overbearing and powerful. Creating urgency and assertiveness within peoples subconscious to persuade them to buy, and buy fast. 

Climb Advert Roughs

Shop Advert Roughs

Run Advert Roughs

Cook Advert Roughs

Colour Survey Results

Here are the results of my survey asking what colours people associate with each of my advertised activities. These are the colours I will move forward with using in the production of my poster.

New Direction for Practical Study

Following on from the previous post, I realised the importance of branding and branded colours when it comes to marketing products. So I wanted to be able to experiment with whether it was possible to market ambiguous products, with no branding or colours associated with them.

My idea is firstly to think of products to sell that have no brand, (possibly actions?) then take surveys on what colours people associate with them, if any, and compare this to what generally accepted colour theory suggests and see whether they match up. Then I want to try and produce a series of images effectively advertising them, and see which colour is most effective in selling it. This will obviously involve a lot of survey taking, but should hopefully result in some quantifiable evidence to support my research.

Colour and Value Survey Results

To get a face value idea of how effective colour can be with regards to perception, I created two images of shopping bags, with nothing different but the colour. I chose to use bags so that the idea of shopping and purchasing would automatically be assumed by the people taking the survey.

The results of the survey were obviously unanimous, with everyone who took the survey selecting that the red bag seemed of less value. This ties in with my research and especially with the ideas suggested in Packard's Hidden Persuaders. Our subconscious automatically associates red with value, when it comes to shopping and retail- or maybe our subconscious assumes black is more valuable because of associations of luxury.

Maybe colour association goes past what was recognised in earlier posts and most things will have a colour linked to them?