Why You Are Predisposed to Worry & How Fonts Influence Our Feelings - SYSK Choice

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Speaker 3 Today, on something you should know?

Speaker 3 Sure, exercise is good for you, but specifically how? I'll explain that. Then, worry.
Why do we often worry way too much?

Speaker 2 One of the phrases I hear so often from my clients, it helps if I expect the worst. Well, actually, it probably doesn't, but they have that sense.

Speaker 2 If I'm not worrying, then I'm treating life too casually.

Speaker 3 Also, can you be addicted to music? And do you know which fonts, which typefaces are best for emails or letters? For example, a lot of people use Times New Roman.

Speaker 4 Times New Roman would be better if you switched to Georgia. Times was designed for the Times newspaper for those very, very narrow column widths of the newspaper, so it's quite condensed.

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Speaker 3 Something you should know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts, and practical advice you can use in your life today.

Speaker 2 Something you should know with Mike Carruthers.

Speaker 3 Hello, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 3 So we all know that exercise is good for your health. But what does that mean exactly? I mean, good for your health.
It's such a vague phrase, it's hardly motivating.

Speaker 3 So, specifically, how is exercise good for your health? Well, according to the Mayo Clinic, here are a couple of very specific reasons to get up and exercise.

Speaker 3 First of all, teenagers who exercise are more likely to graduate and less likely to develop a brain tumor.

Speaker 3 Men who exercise vigorously are two-thirds less likely to experience erectile dysfunction as those who don't. Women who exercise tend to have fewer mood swings and better sex lives.

Speaker 3 Seniors who exercise three times a week are much less likely to develop dementia. People suffering from depression can lessen the symptoms by over 40% with aerobic exercise.

Speaker 3 The bottom line is that people who exercise for an average of 15 minutes a day generally live longer and enjoy a better quality of life than people who don't. And that is something you should know.

Speaker 3 You may have noticed, if you think back, that a lot of the things you worry about, you probably didn't need to worry about.

Speaker 3 Not everything, perhaps, but it does seem that we tend to worry about things more than we should. Some people really overworry.

Speaker 3 There just seems to be something that compels us that when we don't know something for sure, we assume the worst. Why do we do that? And why do we hear so much today about worry and anxiety?

Speaker 3 Well, here to help understand all this better and maybe find a way to worry less is David Carbonell. He is a clinical psychologist who specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders as a therapist.

Speaker 3 And he's author of a book called The Worry Trick, How Your Brain Tricks You Into Expecting the Worst. Hey, David, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 2 Oh, hi, Mike. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 Sure. So first explain what worry is.

Speaker 3 And I'd like to know what's the difference between worry and anxiety.

Speaker 2 Worry is basically the cognitive part, the thinking part of anxiety. A person could have anxiety.

Speaker 2 in several forms. They might have physical symptoms, shortness of breath, pulse picking up.

Speaker 2 They might have unpleasant emotions, feeling apprehensive, on edge. They might have anxious behaviors, biting my nails, avoiding something that I dread.

Speaker 2 And they can also experience anxiety in the form of thoughts, typically

Speaker 2 intrusive what-if thoughts. What if this meeting goes poorly? What if I catch a disease? What if my son flunks out of school? What if we lose the house? That kind of thing.

Speaker 2 And so those collectively, those thoughts, mostly not always set up by the presence of the what-if clause,

Speaker 2 that's the form of worry that most people struggle with.

Speaker 3 And oftentimes, it seems, we worry about things that we probably never needed to worry about, but sometimes we worry about things, and it was a good thing we worried.

Speaker 3 So clearly worry has a role, but so when is it a problem?

Speaker 2 Worry can be useful if it tips me off to something that I have to do, that I have to tend to. Gee, what if I'm not ready for that meeting next week and I haven't prepared? Well, it tells me prepare.

Speaker 2 And once having gotten that message and having prepared,

Speaker 2 well, then I don't need the message anymore.

Speaker 2 And hopefully, ordinarily, that message will drop off my radar once I've taken the necessary precaution of preparing for the meeting or arranging a doctor appointment or whatever.

Speaker 2 All too often, though, even if I have taken the message and made my preparation, or even more commonly, when there really isn't any preparation to do, the worry persists.

Speaker 2 And it functions like an annoying neighbor who keeps coming around, tapping me on the shoulder. Have you thought about what will happen if you die next month?

Speaker 2 And there's nothing I can do with that information. The neighbor is just annoying.
And I have to figure out what's a good way to relate to this thought.

Speaker 2 Because since it's not a neighbor, I can't can't tell him to go home. The thought is in my own mind.
And that's the challenge for people dealing with chronic worry.

Speaker 2 How can I relate to the presence of this intrusive, unwanted reminder of something that probably isn't going to be an issue?

Speaker 3 So why is it, do you suppose, that some people handle worry

Speaker 3 so much easier and other people see trouble where it just it is just not there

Speaker 2 well it it's there seems to be strong indicators that there are genetic predispositions to this that right from birth some people are born better candidates than others to have trouble with this

Speaker 2 some people come to having a panic attack or chronic worry episodes rather naturally and and other people seems like gee they couldn't

Speaker 2 have a panic attack if you paid them to do it. They just don't have the temperament.
They'll have other difficulties in life, but not that.

Speaker 2 So first off the bat

Speaker 2 predisposition, that anxiety disorders tend to run strongly in families. And if you find one

Speaker 2 person in this generation who's had trouble with an anxiety disorder, odds of finding others back a generation or more are something like three to four times as high as if you looked at a random person on the street.

Speaker 2 So there's genetic predisposition and there's the learning of what happens to them. How do they deal with their first episode? Did they get help? Did they have good information?

Speaker 2 They might outgrow that first episode immediately. If they didn't, they might labor in secrecy and fear and doubt.
And that's the breeding ground for a chronic problem.

Speaker 3 Well, certainly there are children who suffer with anxiety problems. And I imagine if they don't get some help,

Speaker 3 that's not going to go away by itself. Or maybe does it ever just go away by itself?

Speaker 2 Probably not.

Speaker 2 Not going away by itself in the sense that parents don't recognize it. Nobody does anything differently and it just fades away.
Now,

Speaker 2 it's very common for children to have, you know, ordinary

Speaker 2 childhood phobias. Those tend to be outgrown.
You know, fear of the dark, fear of the lion in the closet, and so on. Those are developmental stages that kids tend naturally to grow, outgrow.

Speaker 2 But a child who, in particular, has a tendency to worry,

Speaker 2 a child who watches

Speaker 2 health commercials, public health messages on television, and worries about those diseases that they're talking about, who sees the message from the Cancer Society looking for donations and begins to worry, what if my family gets cancer?

Speaker 2 That's probably not going to be outgrown. A child who has that habit, that habit's probably going to stick unless something happens to help them set that aside.

Speaker 3 Is there a sense of why, you know, somebody can hear the same information? You know,

Speaker 3 I tried to call mom and she didn't pick up the phone.

Speaker 3 I'll try her again later. She must not be near her phone.
And then someone else hears that and assumes, well, she must have been in a car crash. She's probably dead or in a ditch.
And

Speaker 3 what happens in the mind that

Speaker 3 that story goes one way with one person and the other way with the other person?

Speaker 2 Well, one way of thinking about it is people who have this tendency towards anxiety and worry, they're much more susceptible to doubt than the average person.

Speaker 2 And that's a big highlight of worry.

Speaker 2 People experience doubt and they treat it like danger.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 the person oriented to worry, mom or my spouse doesn't pick up the phone the first time I call, it's not going to occur to them that there are other explanations. This is dangerous.

Speaker 2 I have to remove that doubt. I must be sure.

Speaker 2 Whereas other people are more prepared to roll with the... the uncertainties.
Well, if I can't reach her now, I'll probably be able to reach her in half an hour.

Speaker 2 So it's that misunderstanding of doubt and treating it like danger that's at the heart of this.

Speaker 3 It seems to me that when somebody is a worrier, so if they're worried that, you know, mom's not picking up the phone, so something horrible must have happened, and then they find out nothing happened, it was fine.

Speaker 3 She just wasn't near her phone. The next time it happens,

Speaker 3 that person doesn't think back, well, the last time this happened, it was nothing. So this time it'll be nothing.

Speaker 3 We don't learn from experience that we over worry.

Speaker 2 No, no, the repeated experience of discovering the thing I worried about didn't happen

Speaker 2 will not really do anything to soothe the chronic worrier. And partly that's because they tend to do things in response to the thoughts they have of doubt.

Speaker 2 Maybe they'll drive past mom's house and see, does the car seem to be there? Maybe they'll call others. Maybe they'll literally try and talk themselves out of it.

Speaker 2 They'll respond in ways which most of us can recognize, gee, that wouldn't do anything to enhance the safety of a close relative. But they'll still think, well, maybe it helped somehow.

Speaker 2 And then so then they're caught in a bind. They have to keep repeating these what we call safety behaviors each time they experience the doubt.

Speaker 2 Doesn't do anything to make anybody safer, but they're afraid, gee, if I let go, if I treat it so casually as to not drive by mom's house, what if that

Speaker 2 is the thing that triggers a really bad event here? And so they get caught up in the idea that they've somehow prevented a bad outcome with their worrying, and that motivates them to worry more.

Speaker 3 Yeah, see, I think there is that tendency to think that if you're worrying about something, you're working on it.

Speaker 2 Exactly. You know, one of the phrases I hear so often from my clients, it helps if I expect the worst.

Speaker 2 Well, actually, it probably doesn't help if you expect the worst, but they have that sense. If I'm not worrying, then I'm treating life too casually.

Speaker 3 And if I am worrying, maybe I'm...

Speaker 3 preventing the problem from ever happening or working on the problem to help it somehow.

Speaker 2 Yes, yes, somehow. And of course,

Speaker 2 if you ask them to pin it down, it becomes hard to figure, well, how are you actually helping? But that that's a powerful belief that at least I care enough to worry about it.

Speaker 3 My sense is that most people who you would consider worriers, people who get anxious and worry, wish they didn't so much.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 2 That's exactly right. People do not enjoy their worry.

Speaker 2 They wish they had less of it.

Speaker 2 Unfortunately, that leads them to oppose and resist their worry in ways that are counterproductive, that make them more prone to worry rather than less.

Speaker 3 We're talking about worry, and my guest is clinical psychologist David Carbonell. He's author of a book called The Worry Trick, How Your Brain Tricks You Into Expecting the Worst.

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Speaker 3 So David, if you do worry or you are worrying about something, how do you stop it?

Speaker 2 Well, the paradox here is

Speaker 2 you can bring it in for a soft landing by not struggling to stop it, that you cultivate a relationship with these thoughts

Speaker 2 of acceptance, even of playing with, rather than trying to stop it.

Speaker 2 So if I asked you, take 20 seconds and don't think about the moon,

Speaker 2 you'd probably find it hard to do that because now you see a big glowing orb in your mind space. They do a similar thing.
They tell themselves, don't think about it.

Speaker 2 And of course, it leads them to think about it more.

Speaker 2 So what we want to do is help people develop a more playful,

Speaker 2 accepting way of having the thoughts. They don't have to treat them seriously, but they need to allow the thoughts to be there rather than oppose them.
So what does that look like?

Speaker 3 Give me an example of being more playful with the thoughts.

Speaker 2 You know, I had a conversation with a man who was a broadcaster, and he described to me an instance.

Speaker 2 He was taping his show, and he had this sudden terrible thought, what if I need to pee during the show?

Speaker 2 And that grabbed all his attention and he had a lot of trouble focusing on his job,

Speaker 2 getting past the thought. Later on, we talked about it.
You know, what else could he have done? And I suggested to him,

Speaker 2 well, how's this for a response? Gee, I wonder if I can hit the front row from here.

Speaker 2 That's a way of taking the thought and joking with it, playing with it, and then moving on on to the next thing rather than arguing or struggling with it.

Speaker 2 One very useful technique a lot of chronic worriers that I work with use. I'll ask them to do their worrying if they have another language, if they're bilingual in any way.

Speaker 2 I'll ask them to do their worrying

Speaker 2 in the weaker language. And just that changes it enough that now they have to stop and think, well, how do you say choke to death in German?

Speaker 2 And it changes the whole context, the way they relate to the thought.

Speaker 2 It doesn't change the content at all, but it has big changes for how they relate to it.

Speaker 3 It seems like

Speaker 3 just from experiencing and watching this, that the more you worry, the more you worry, the more you worry, that it compounds on top of itself.

Speaker 2 Yes, that's exactly right. And the way it compounds, the mechanism, is you worry and you try to stop.
And you worry some more and you tell yourself, that's silly, stop that, and you worry more.

Speaker 2 That's the method of compounding. It's I worry and I oppose it.
And so the whole focus on helping a person worry less is on helping them let go of that resistance,

Speaker 2 not to struggle, but to play with the content of the worry.

Speaker 3 Something I've, because I know people who are like real worriers, and I think if they stop worrying, who would they be? Because that's what they do.

Speaker 3 That's kind of like, how would they fill up their day? Because they spend so much of it worrying?

Speaker 2 Yes. Well, this is a real issue for people, you know, who may be working in therapy to become less of a worrier.

Speaker 2 And it's true, that's become part of their identity.

Speaker 2 And they will have worries about, gee, if I don't worry so much.

Speaker 2 What am I going to do? And you know what? One of the most interesting things that'll happen is as they start to worry less, and maybe they've had a theme that they worry about, be it health or money

Speaker 2 or family,

Speaker 2 as they start to worry less about that, guess what's going to happen?

Speaker 2 They're going to go through a phase where they worry about the fact that they're not worrying.

Speaker 2 That's how integral.

Speaker 2 the act of worry is. As they worry less, they're going to worry, uh-oh,

Speaker 2 am I not taking life seriously enough now? Perhaps I should be worrying more. I'm not comfortable when I'm not worrying.

Speaker 3 It seems like a never-ending cycle. It just feeds on itself.

Speaker 2 Well, it's true. It is a cycle.
It does feed on itself.

Speaker 2 It's not that it's never-ending. You know, when we talk about what could someone expect as they work on this, I always like to talk about...

Speaker 2 a recovery rather than a cure, that this is a habit you learn to inhibit rather than a disease that you overcome and leave behind.

Speaker 2 It's much better thought of as a habit, and some people are much, much more prone to it than others.

Speaker 3 Aaron Powell, Jr.: So the next time, let's say I'm worried about something overly worrying, because I think people who worry too much know they worry too much, but that doesn't help them stop it.

Speaker 3 So if you're worrying about something,

Speaker 3 what's the, you know, if there is such a thing, kind of the first aid, like, how do you, is there a way to stop it in its tracks? Is there a way to slow it down?

Speaker 3 Anything?

Speaker 2 One good first step in slowing it down is postponing. Now, I don't want to have anybody tell themselves, stop worrying and oppose it.
That doesn't work.

Speaker 2 Something that often works a lot better.

Speaker 2 Well, I see I keep thinking about problem XYZ.

Speaker 2 Let's see.

Speaker 2 How about I come back to this in half an hour? I'm going to set an appointment. I'm going to actually set a little alarm on my phone.

Speaker 2 And half an hour from now, if I feel the need to worry about it, I'll do it then. In the meantime, I'm going to go on about my business.
Postponing is a powerful way that people can influence this.

Speaker 2 There's a good chance that when the time comes that they set for the appointment, it's no longer going to be first in their mind and they're going to be more likely to be able to say,

Speaker 2 I don't care care about that. I don't think I need to keep this appointment with worry now.

Speaker 2 So that's a very good first step. Let me postpone this.
If this is important, it'll be important in an hour and a half. I'll come back to it then.

Speaker 3 I've often wondered if

Speaker 3 people who worry

Speaker 3 that one of the rewards for being a worrier is that when you worry about something and whatever you're worried about doesn't happen or the resolution is somewhat different than the thing, the horrible thing you've been thinking, that that feels so good that it's worth worrying about so that you feel good when it doesn't happen.

Speaker 2 Well, there's some of that.

Speaker 2 It feels good for it to stop.

Speaker 2 And they also have, in all sincerity, a sense that somehow they played a role.

Speaker 2 If I hadn't worried, maybe it wouldn't have turned out so well.

Speaker 2 So they get the relief and they also feel like I've been the best person I could. I worried and therefore my child is okay.
I worried and therefore this project turned out all right.

Speaker 2 It's not just that they get the relief. They also feel like I authored the better outcome.

Speaker 3 Well, this has been really insightful because I think a lot of us have worried about things that we never needed to worry about.

Speaker 3 And yet we went through that whole process, as you described, how our brain tricks us into thinking there's danger and then we expect the worst and we're ready for a fight and and it's all so pointless and yet it's so hard not to do.

Speaker 3 I've been speaking with David Carbonell.

Speaker 3 He is a clinical psychologist who specializes in the treatment of anxiety disorders and he is author of a book called The Worry Trick, How Your Brain Tricks You Into Expecting the Worst.

Speaker 3 And you will find a link to that book in the show notes. I appreciate you coming on.
Thank you, David.

Speaker 2 Oh, thanks for having me.

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Speaker 3 Have you ever opened up Microsoft Word or whatever word processing thing you have and look at all the possible fonts you can use and then wonder, why?

Speaker 3 Who uses some of these strange-looking fonts? Where did they come from?

Speaker 3 And maybe more importantly, do the type styles, the fonts that we use, does it have an impact on the people reading what we write? Do you send a message by the font you use?

Speaker 3 Well, the short answer is yes. And there is a lot of interesting research into this that we're about to discuss with Sarah Hindman.

Speaker 3 She is a graphic designer who specializes in exploring how fonts influence people. And she is author of a book called Why Fonts Matter.
Hi, Sarah. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 4 Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

Speaker 3 Is there research regarding, I assume there probably is, about just the everyday use of, you know, in emails and memos and things about which fonts do what and and and even type sizes i know some people like to use little tiny type sizes and uh i don't know if that's good or bad or like or is it all just preference there is loads of research and especially as technology things like eye tracking technology and fMRI scanning, neuroscience scanning gets more and more accessible, we are understanding so much more, firstly, about how we read,

Speaker 4 how our

Speaker 4 eyesight changes over time so if you're in a teenager you can read that tiny tiny little type but once you get past the age of about 35 your eyesight starts to change so when you go to when you look at an email in teeny writing you're going to have to enlarge it or for me the classic is you go to a restaurant and everybody's got their phones out with their torches on because they can't quite read the menu because it's in teeny letters in a kind of quite dark lighting.

Speaker 4 And there is lots of research to show that size matters, the space between the letters matter. Some typefaces are much more readable than others.

Speaker 4 But a lot of the time it depends on who the audience is. There is no one right

Speaker 4 typeface, one right font for everybody. Sometimes it needs to make an emotional connection.
It needs to be what you expect to see in that context.

Speaker 4 Other times it needs to be incredibly readable at a first glance.

Speaker 4 So there's research into typefaces on car dashboards where you need to just really quickly be able to see the information and not have to think about it for any time, any length of time, because you need to make a split second decision.

Speaker 4 So huge amounts of research into this.

Speaker 3 Are there fonts that are basically considered easy to read for just about everybody?

Speaker 4 If you want

Speaker 4 a font that would be standard on your email, there is some research that was done in the last couple of years by the team who was researching for a new BBC typeface.

Speaker 4 And they worked out that of the ones on your email, if you use Vadana and you make it a decent size, then that's probably about the most readable choice that you can make.

Speaker 4 There is other research to show that if you want to come across as

Speaker 4 a little bit more intellectual or talking about or knowledgeable that if you use a typeface like Georgia because it has the little feet, the little serifs, then we associate that with knowledge in history.

Speaker 4 So you've got both of them are quite easy to read, but they have different emotional connections that they're going to make with you.

Speaker 3 But the emotional connection is in the mind of the reader or is in the mind of the sender?

Speaker 4 It's going to be interpreted by the mind of the reader. So both of you have an idea, but it's like the clothes that you decide to wear.

Speaker 4 I know what I want to communicate, but it's down to the people looking at me as to whether they think it's appropriate. I don't know, for me to be wearing my pajamas down to my local shop.

Speaker 3 Well, the two fonts you just mentioned, Verdana and Georgia, aren't ones I think I see a lot. I mean, I see Arial a lot, Times New Roman a lot.
And maybe it's just default and maybe people pick it up.

Speaker 4 Exactly, exactly that. Times New Roman was the default for a long time.
Then Arial was the default for a long time.

Speaker 4 So

Speaker 4 unless you really want to think about fonts or you really want to

Speaker 4 care about them a lot of the time, you'll just use whatever's there in front of you because it's all about just writing and communicating.

Speaker 4 And it's only once you want to start, once you start thinking about it, then you will play with them a little bit more.

Speaker 3 But are those good choices? I mean, does the research show that, you know, Ariel, Times New Roman,

Speaker 3 if you just want to send out a memo and get people to read it, no problem.

Speaker 4 Times New Roman would be better if you switched it to Georgia. Times was designed for the Times newspaper, and it was designed for those very, very narrow column widths of the newspaper.

Speaker 4 So it's quite condensed. And as soon as you're actually spreading it out all the way across a page, it starts to become a little bit harder to read.
And the same with Arial.

Speaker 4 It's not designed for readability so much as the more modern typefaces like Vadana, which have been designed designed with characters that make them look different from each other.

Speaker 4 So at a glance, you can read them much more easily.

Speaker 3 Can you trace back the origins of all these fonts? Or do some of them, they're so old there is no story or what?

Speaker 4 So printed typefaces, the very first printed typefaces appeared in China and Korea centuries before they started to be used in Europe.

Speaker 4 And the first printed typefaces in Europe were designed in Germany in the mid-1400s. Lots of people were trying to invent mechanical handwriting because there was so much demand for written books.

Speaker 4 And it was a man called Johannes Gutenberg who's generally credited with printing the first ones, although, as I said, lots of other people were trying to, and he also had a team around him.

Speaker 4 So he printed in what were really kind of gothic typefaces. If you think of a heavy metal record cover, those kind of really spiky gothic typefaces you might see on that.

Speaker 4 But at the time, this is what handwriting looked like. So he just printed, he made metal printing type out of what looked like the handwriting of the day.

Speaker 4 So in a way, this would have been the most readable. This was like the Times New Roman or the Ariel of the 1400s because it was so familiar.

Speaker 4 And then gradually as time has gone on and different technologies and also different aesthetics have come along. So a few decades later, that spiky typeface was just not fashionable anymore.

Speaker 4 So the new printers decided, oh, we want a new, simpler typeface for a modern era. So we're going to be influenced by ancient Rome, which we think is the height of civilization.

Speaker 4 And then you come to the 1950s when again, serifs, anything kind of historic has fallen out of favor.

Speaker 4 So suddenly this new, very minimalist typeface called Helvetica and lots of other styles like Helvetica were suddenly incredibly popular because they they mirrored the aesthetic of the moment.

Speaker 4 So they develop through both through technology, but also it's what society, the tastes that we kind of,

Speaker 4 that we appreciate at any moment in time.

Speaker 3 Isn't that interesting that fonts go in and out of style like clothes?

Speaker 3 Is there any evidence that there's a difference in terms of the way a reader reads something, if it's a serif or sans-serif type, if the letters have the little feet at the bottom or

Speaker 3 they don't have little feet at the bottom?

Speaker 4 Well, on a very, very basic level, if a typeface has got serifs on it, you will assume that what you're reading is a little bit more intellectual, a little bit more

Speaker 4 researched, a bit more academic, maybe. There was a really fun study where two groups of people were given exactly the same article from the New York Times.

Speaker 4 One group read it in a serif typeface, the other one read it in a sans-serif typeface, so without the feed. So in fact, I think it was New York, I think it's possibly

Speaker 4 Times New Roman versus Ariel.

Speaker 4 And they were asked how satirical, so how

Speaker 4 witty and

Speaker 4 they thought the article was. And the people who read it with serifs thought that the article was actually more satirical than those who read it without serifs.

Speaker 4 So it creates a mood that can

Speaker 4 kind of influence or flavor how you read the article that you're reading.

Speaker 3 What about type size? When you're reading an article, as you pointed out, you know, sometimes when you read a menu, you can't read it. It's too dark and too small.

Speaker 3 But also, you know, I don't want to read articles where the type is really big either. I mean, is there a sweet spot for type size?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 4 I mean, type size does matter in the teeny tiny type doesn't work for everybody, unless, of of course you're creating something for the teenage market and you don't want the grown-ups to read it um and as it gets bigger it yeah absolutely it starts to shout i mean these days because we look at things on our screens you never quite know what size type is going to enlarge or shrink down to but there is this weak spot which designers or you can see for yourself when you're looking at when you're looking at a screen and it also depends on whether you're looking at on a computer screen or your phone because you'll hold one much closer to your face than another.

Speaker 4 So if you're holding it closer, you can have much smaller type. So you take lots of things into consideration.
And at the end of the day,

Speaker 4 type has to be tested in the circumstances that you're going to read it in. So there's no point saying, oh, you should always use 12-point type because that's not going to apply across everything.

Speaker 3 Well, that's an interesting point because how you send it may not be how it's perceived by the other person because they may be looking at it on their phone.

Speaker 3 They may be looking on a huge computer monitor. You don't know how they're reading it.
So is there any kind of like default? No matter how they read it, this is probably going to work best.

Speaker 4 Definitely don't go and use that fancy new font that you've just downloaded from somewhere because if they don't have it on their machine, it's just going to default to Arial or to Times New Roman.

Speaker 4 Don't shout at people.

Speaker 4 uppercase letters, all caps, it just shouts. So I think that that for me would be one of the big things not to do.

Speaker 4 You know, when you get an email and it's all caps in the subject and it's just stop shouting at me.

Speaker 3 Unless I guess they want to shout at you.

Speaker 4 If you want somebody to read your email, maybe you don't really

Speaker 2 shout at them.

Speaker 2 Probably not.

Speaker 3 So if I sent you, if I sent you an email, it's just say to confirm this interview. And you responded, what would I be reading?

Speaker 3 What type face and what size would it come back at? What do you use?

Speaker 4 Mine would come back to you in Georgia because I know that you're going to have it on your system. And I want the serifs because I want you to know that I'm a little bit of a nerdy kind of type.

Speaker 4 And it's going to be, I would imagine, in 12 or 13 point. I set that as a default a long, long time ago.
So I don't go and change it every time.

Speaker 4 But if you've set your browser to default to something else, then it's going to translate it and make it look you

Speaker 4 You might have set your email to only to convert everything into bright magenta comic sands in 16 point, and I have no control over that.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I can assure you I didn't.

Speaker 4 It would have given me quite a comedic voice, though.

Speaker 3 In fact, I wouldn't even know how to do that.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 3 so I wonder, you know, you hear rules like

Speaker 3 Like if you're writing a resume or something, you know, don't use a lot of different typefaces that and, you know,

Speaker 3 what about all that what does the mind do when there's lots of bold or lots of underlines and lots of different typefaces on a document I mean my sense is it's kind of cluttered and hard to read but is there research on that

Speaker 4 or there's a really a great study where they actually measured how much people frowned when they looked at different types of designed pages and when there were too many fonts and too many different some of them were arranged left some of them were arranged like to the right and it was really hard to read they found people frowned much much more

Speaker 4 and when typeface environment when environments were much easier to read so they had more space they had fewer fonts and it was much easier to navigate around the page they found that people didn't frown and in fact it made them feel happier and they were much more likely to then respond to the email whether it was replying to it whether it was buying something so

Speaker 4 I really like the idea that somebody actually sat there and measured frowns for this. And I completely agree.
If there's lots going on on the page, it's like being in a really noisy nightclub.

Speaker 4 Everybody's clamoring for your attention. You don't really know which words to read because all of them are shouting at you.

Speaker 3 When I look at Microsoft Word and I look at all the fonts there, and you say that's just a tiny sliver of all the available fonts in the world. Who created those?

Speaker 3 I mean, I don't mean by name, but generally, who are the people that create fonts? And do they make money because they're now part of Microsoft Word? Or like, do they get royalties from that?

Speaker 4 Sadly, I don't think any type designers get royalties

Speaker 4 from putting their fonts on Microsoft Word. They do.
So there are lots of different places that as a designer, I would get fonts from. There is...

Speaker 4 A lot of your listeners might use Adobe products and Adobe fonts come built into their products and the type designers who design those fonts, they definitely get royalties. So

Speaker 4 the big type foundries who will also basically lease you the fonts that you can use, it's a little bit like the record industry.

Speaker 4 So they're like the record companies and the type designers are like the musicians and each of their fonts is like the record that they they release. So they're published by these big type foundries.

Speaker 4 And so it's a really flourishing business, especially as technology is changing and lots of people are becoming much, much more aware of all of the different fonts.

Speaker 4 We're really enjoying using all of the different ones that we have accessible to us.

Speaker 3 What are some other examples of how fonts influence us? Because I just don't think people think about it.

Speaker 3 You know, when we read words, we think that what's important, and I guess it is, is what's being said.

Speaker 3 But explain some examples of how the fonts influence us as a reader.

Speaker 4 I think there would be some really easy examples.

Speaker 4 So if you took your cola of choice and you just saw even a sliver of each of the logos, you would know from the style of the lettering, from the style of the font on the can, which brand it was without even reading it, without even reading the word that it said.

Speaker 4 And also movie posters, you know exactly what kind of movie you're about to go and see just from the style of the font.

Speaker 4 You know, if it's kind of a science fiction or if it's going to be a horror movie or a romance movie, just from the letters that you read, again before you've even read the title or even if you do read the title it it the letters actually tell you what it's going to be but exactly as you say we don't think about that because when we read rather than looking at the shapes of the letters you the meaning with the thing that they mean the thing that you're reading the ideas they get beamed straight into your head.

Speaker 4 And so you go straight from looking at something to ideas and imagination or songs or flavors.

Speaker 4 And the actually how they got there is not something that you ever really need to think about.

Speaker 3 I know you've done a lot of research yourself and work in this. Is there anything else that people would find really surprising or interesting in terms of the way fonts influence us?

Speaker 4 So I'm really interested in how different typefaces interact with our different senses.

Speaker 4 And one of the very early pieces of experiments I did was looking at how if I give you two identical jelly beans to eat and I get you to look at either a curved typeface or a jagged typeface, how you will actually perceive the jelly bean as tasting sweeter or sourer.

Speaker 4 And that's now been published as a study, which I find really exciting because I'm a graphic designer, not a scientist. So when the scientists take my work seriously, it's great.

Speaker 4 But then I decided to get really clever and I thought, okay, we know if a product's expensive because you have a really expensive looking font on it.

Speaker 4 You know kind of what an expensive looking font looks It's very skinny. It might have some very sort of hairline details on it.
Whereas a very cheap font looks kind of almost like childish.

Speaker 4 It's very round. It looks a little bit more like it's been drawn with a child's

Speaker 4 marker pen, paintbrush.

Speaker 4 So I thought, okay, I bet I can make chocolate taste much, much more expensive. And I went along to an event and I tried putting chocolate in either expensive or cheap typefaces.

Speaker 4 And then I asked people how it tasted. And the first day it went brilliantly.
I had expensive chocolate. People rated it as tasting more expensive.
They enjoyed it more.

Speaker 4 And then the second day I ran out of chocolate because it turns out your experiments are really popular if you give away free chocolate. So the second day

Speaker 4 I did the same thing again, but I took along some really cheap chocolate this time.

Speaker 4 But at the end of the day, I tallied up the results again and I was really a little bit disappointed, surprised, because not only had it not worked, but actually the people who'd eaten the cheap chocolate to the expensive typeface, the expensive font rated it as tasting even cheaper and nastier.

Speaker 4 And then when I went along and asked the scientists, what on earth had I done wrong, they said, oh, it's because you tried to convince people that something expensive or something, sorry, that something cheap was expensive.

Speaker 4 And when the anticipation and the actual experience didn't match, it amplified the cheapness of what you were trying to give them.

Speaker 4 So I think the moral at the end of this is a typeface, a font can nudge your perception a little bit.

Speaker 4 It can add a tiny little bit of sweet sprinkles to something, but it can never convince you that something is what it's not.

Speaker 3 Well, this is such a great example of a topic, of a thing that we all use all the time, either as a reader or a writer.

Speaker 3 Typefaces are influencing us and influencing the people who are reading our stuff. And we know so little about it.

Speaker 3 Now we know a little bit more. I've been talking with Sarah Hindman.
She's a graphic designer and author of the book, Why Fonts Matter. And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Speaker 3 Thanks, Sarah. This was really interesting.

Speaker 4 Thank you very much. It was a pleasure talking to you.

Speaker 3 Have you ever found yourself craving your favorite song or favorite artist? Well, it really is a craving.

Speaker 3 In fact, music is, in essence, addictive because listening to our favorite tunes or catchy new songs triggers the brain to release dopamine. And we all love our dopamine.

Speaker 3 Have you ever listened to a song that literally gave you the chills? That's your brain releasing large amounts of dopamine.

Speaker 3 Kids who were hooked up to an MRI scanner provided some real evidence to the fact that music is addictive.

Speaker 3 Scientists could actually predict a future hit song by reading the activity in the pleasure centers of the brain when the right chords were struck.

Speaker 3 The most addictive songs were those that had a predictable melody, a catchy chorus, and left kids craving more and wanting to hear it again. And that is Something You Should Know.

Speaker 3 I would love it if you would tell someone or two people or maybe three people about this podcast and ask them to give a listen. I suspect they'd enjoy it as much as you do.
I'm Mike Herbers.

Speaker 3 Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Next up is a little song from CarMax about selling a car your way.

Speaker 2 You

Speaker 2 So fast. Wanna take a sec to think about it.
Or like a month. Wanna keep tabs on that instant offer.
With offer watch. Wanna have CarMax pick it up from the driveway.

Speaker 3 So, wanna drive? CarMax. Pickup not available everywhere.
Restrictions and fee may apply.

Speaker 6 Oh, the Regency era.

Speaker 7 You

Speaker 7 Vulgar History is a women's history podcast, and our Regency Era series will be focusing on the most rebellious women of this time.

Speaker 7 That includes Jane Austen herself, who is maybe more radical than you might have thought.

Speaker 7 We'll also be talking about queer icons like Anne Lister, scientists like Mary Anning and Ada Lovelace, as well as other scandalous actresses, royal mistresses, rebellious princesses, and other lesser-known figures who made history happen in England in the Regency era.

Speaker 5 Listen to Vulgar History wherever you get podcasts.