What your style says about you

Richard Golds of Gemini Brighton considers the question of style...

Choosing a font style is a bit like getting dressed – only you have to do it standing on your desk – baring your wobbly bits – in front of your colleagues and competitors EVERY single day!  

People make judgements all the time about others, even about things that we are probably blissfully unaware of most of the time, like the typeface we use for our emails.

So just like choosing the right clothes for the right occasion you must be careful to select the right one according to the kind of message you are seeking to convey.

So is it to be serif or sans serif? In a serif typeface the letters have extra curls and bobbles, reminiscent of calligraphy, whereas in sans serif (literally without serif) the letter forms have clean lines without any protruding bits.

So what subliminal messages are your font choices sending out to others?

Times New Roman:  Breath a sigh of relief – you’re stable, polite, conformist, mature, formal, and practical - Your all-business font of choice. You will get under the limbo stick of life ok!

Courier New: Poor Courier— rigid, sad, dull, unattractive, plain, coarse, and masculine, in addition to conformist and mature. You may want to try it for cold, unemotional ‘Dear John’ letters, if at all. Don’t use it when emailing the boss – you could be for the chop.

Arial: Stable and conformist —so if you’re planning on rocking the company boat at your next meeting, this font could give your ideas authority. Beware it can also be seen to be unimaginative – counteract this with a Hawaiian shirt or some cracking high-heels.

Calibri: You like good, calculated fun. You’re a favourite at communication conferences, because you’re always organising happy hours and making new friends. But stop buying everybody else cocktails Calibri – and join in!

Comic Sans: The wacky uncle of the font family - youthful, casual, and passive. Save it for Web graphics, documents aimed at kids, and digital scrapbooking. Not one for the workplace unless you want to be a laughing stock.

Gigi:  Meet the sex kitten of the typeface universe. Flexible, creative, happy, exciting, attractive, elegant, cuddly, and feminine, but you can also be seen as unstable, rebellious, youthful, casual, passive, and impractical, making Gigi perhaps the most complex typeface of them all. Suitable for E-greetings and nothing else - you could be judged a bunny-boiler!

Old English Text:  Dear grandfather of corporate communications: maybe it’s time to retire. Spend your golden years with a pint at a bar, not complaining about the whipper-snappers on Twitter.

A typeface may never quite be able to replicate the intimacy of pen and ink but with an estimated 200,000 fonts to choose from, there is no shortage of different styles. We usually pay more attention, or get the help of a graphic designer, for our printed material such as logos, brochures, business cards etc – so deep within the recesses of our minds we know that font styles count and do convey a lot more than the words they represent.

The final word on fonts? Feel free to play around with your personal correspondence, but stick to the classics like Times New Roman and Arial, particularly at work. No one wants to read a legal brief in curly, cuddly Gigi!

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk