A new font can help lodge information deeper in your brain, researchers say, but it's not magic - just the science of effort.
Psychology and design researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne created a font called Sans Forgetica, which was designed to boost information retention for readers. It's based on a theory called "desirable difficulty", which suggests that people remember things better when their brains have to overcome minor obstacles while processing information. Sans Forgetica is sleek and back-slanted with intermittent gaps in each letter, which serve as a "simple puzzle" for the reader, according to Stephen Banham, a designer and RMIT lecturer who helped create the font.
"It should be difficult to read but not too difficult," Banham said. "In demanding this additional act, memory is more likely to be triggered."
In designing Sans Forgetica, Banham said he had to override his instincts, ingrained from 25 years of studying typography. Clarity, the ease of processing and familiarity are usually guiding principles in the field. The back-slanting in Sans Forgetica would be foreign to most readers, as back-slanting in type is typically only used by cartographers to indicate rivers. The openings in the letters make the brain pause to identify the shapes.
The team tested the font's efficacy along with other intentionally complicated fonts on 400 students in lab and online experiments and found that "Sans Forgetica broke just enough design principles without becoming too illegible and aided memory retention," according to a news release on the university's website.