If food is the language of love, what font do you use? That might sound like an impossibly multi-faceted question. But Sarah Hyndman, a British designer specializing in typography, has been researching the connection between our taste in food and our taste in fonts and, believe it or not, what this might all mean for our love lives.
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Are fonts the food of love? —
Some fonts, she says, are naturally associated with particular tastes or textures. She demonstrates this by making certain fonts into foods; for instance, these jellied sweets are made in the shape of the font Burlingame, which has a "jellyish" feel.
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Are fonts the food of love? —
The dignified Baskerville font was designed in 1757, which was the era in which tea became very popular in England. To reflect this history, Hyndman bakes Baskerville Earl Grey tea biscuits, which she uses in events like her Typetasting workshop at the London Design Festival. The history of a font, she believes, influences our perception of it.
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Are fonts the food of love? —
She also bakes water biscuits in the shape of the font Helvetica. She believes that the neutrality and plainness of water biscuits closely resembles the characteristics of this "un-flashy" and functional font.
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Are fonts the food of love? —
"Comedian, novelty, and friendly" were the words most commonly used to describe Comic Sans, the typeface everybody loves to hate.
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Are fonts the food of love? —
Maintaining the culinary comparisons, Hyndman offered her take on a selection of corporate fonts, taken from the Forbes top 10 list of the world's most valuable brands. "The chunky but carefully sliced Nokia logo looks savory and filling," she says. "This is solid and thick sliced; the stuff of hearty sandwiches but made with machine like precision giving you the confidence that each mouthful will taste the same."
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Are fonts the food of love? —
"The Google letters suggest a bag of home made iced gem biscuits made with the kids," she says. "Each one a small crunchy bite carefully smothered in different flavored sweet, fruity icing."
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Are fonts the food of love? —
She even sees the CNN logo in culinary terms. "The round letters promise to be sweet with a slight crunch at the ends on first biting into it," she says. "Once the outer layer has melted a chewy inner core is revealed which gives a satisfying depth of texture."
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Are fonts the food of love? —
What about the iconic IBM logo? "It layers up unexpected textures of soft minty freshness between solid layers that give it structure and create a brittle and satisfying crunch to bite into," says Hyndman.
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Are fonts the food of love? —
"The free flowing letters of the Disney logo look like runny honey drizzled across the page. They look sweet and full of childhood memories of lazy summertime picnics."
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Are fonts the food of love? —
"...and you know at a glance that the McDonald's logo tastes of melted processed cheese."
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Are fonts the food of love? —
As part of her Typetasting workshops, she creates Fortune Font Bags, which reveal a summary of your personality when opened -- along with some carefully-shaped font sweets.
Courtesy of Sarah Hyndman
Are fonts the food of love? —
The connection between fonts and foods, she says, is not as crazy as it sounds. Consider your reaction to these different cans. What does each choice of font tell you about what they might contain?
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Are fonts the food of love? —
Helvetica, which was developed in Switzerland in 1957 by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann, is the ultimate neutral font. Hyndman has carried out numerous surveys to study our responses to different fonts. The three words most associated with Helvetica are "everyman", "conventional" and "neutral".
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Are fonts the food of love? —
Gill Sans, which was designed by Eric Gill in 1928, is also seen as "everyman", as well as "authoritative" and "credible". It is quintessentially British, inspired by the London Underground typeface and used by the BBC.
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Are fonts the food of love? —
Times New Roman, which was was commissioned by The Times and designed by Victor Lardent and Stanley Morison in 1932, is perceived to be "intellectual", "conventional" and "neutral". "Fonts influence our unconscious minds far more than we appreciate," Hyndman says.
