Thinking about international, global intended design, I started my research for typography that is meant to be suitable for everyone’s needs.
While thinking about a universal typeface that suits the needs of the whole world, I want to recall to development of the idea of International Typographic Style, that emerged in Russia, the Netherlands, and Germany in the 1920s and was further developed by designers in Switzerland during the 1950s.
The style emerged from a desire to represent information objectively, free from the influence of associated meaning. In some way, this can be very useful considering that the typefaces like Helvetica could be endlessly interpreted for everything from signage (the New York City subway, for example) to web pages and logos.
This style was guided by the principles that design should be as invisible as possible. All traces of the designer’s subjectivity should be kept hidden in order to let the “core” of the work comes in the front.
The style highlights cleanness, readability, and objectivity. Many of the early International Typographic Style works featured typography as a primary design element in addition to its use in the text, which refers to the style’s name.
International Typographic Style thought us that this kind of typography can be applied to anything and used across the globe, but sometimes it could be helpful to think in the opposite direction.
While designers try to make the typeface that will suit the needs of every language, on the other hand, every language has to have the typeface that reflects its qualities the best. Before entering this sphere, we have to consider font psychology first.
Font psychology means, simply said, that the more specific the font style is, the more unique the brand personality can be, and the easier the brand recall.
Referring to font psychology Helvetica is the most popular and one of the more “readable”.
But font psychology is also connected with the users’ psychology. That is why I’m wondering, is it possible to associate certain fonts to a certain language to understand their meaning better?
Can font psychology influence our ability to compare and learn different languages faster?
What typeface is the best for designing the language app? Can it influence our ability to learn or our speed of making conclusions?
What do we have to think about, when designing for other languages?
All these questions lay open for now because we can not give a precise answer yet, but the truth is that every design has a goal. And by choosing the fonts that inspire the right emotional response in your audience, it helps you reach your goal.
That means that we can definitely choose the font that inspires people to learn and to find similarities and differences between different structures of part of sentences, and what fonts work the best for which language needs to be tested.
Sources:
https://material.io/design/typography/language-support.html#language-considerations
https://en.99designs.at/mobile-app-design/contests/app-design-language-learning-472768
https://www.canva.com/learn/font-psychology/
