Beyond words: how fonts make us feel

Tim Burrowes

October 28, 2013 10:45

In a crossposting from The Conversation, UTS’s Louise McWhinnie celebrates the joy of fonts.

Typography is all around us. Fonts are on every document and website we read but also within the ephemera of our lives: on the toothpaste we use, newspapers we read, bus tickets we swipe and the streets we travel.

Our visual habitat is populated with myriad letter forms, all communicating layers of competing information, instruction and message, clamouring desperately for our attention. Our selection and reaction to this communication is largely influenced by the fonts themselves.

The typewriter provided a single typeface without choice and the computer offers a similar abdication of responsibility through its default font.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.