A Further Look at Perception of Personalities in Typefaces: Evidence From Turkish

Previous research conducted in English indicates that the visual appearances of different typefaces are perceived as possessing distinct characteristics, what we call "print personality" (e.g., masculine, feminine, serious, fun) to the extent that the typeface used conveys information to the reader beyond that which is expressed linguistically by the word. Recent work has found that these attributions of "print personality" also extend to typefaces written in Arabic, but one language that is distinct from both languages is Turkish. Turkish is written in a version of the Latinate alphabet containing 29 letters which include unique diacritics and is a genderless language which requires no gender associations for nouns, pronouns, or adjectives. Given that many print personalities appear to be strongly associated with gender (masculine, feminine, elegance, confidence), it remains to be determined if the association of print personalities extends to Turkish typefaces, and the pattern of any such associations. Accordingly, sixteen different typefaces were presented to fluent native Turkish readers who rated each typeface according to 22 different personality characteristics. The results indicate that, although Turkish participants readily assigned personality characteristics to different typefaces, gendered associations across different typefaces were far weaker than previously found. Implications for the generality of the existence of typeface personalities across different languages, and the effect this may have on perception of genderless languages, are discussed.