It’s not the prettiest of fonts with its slight backward slant and breaks in the letters. The backward slant reminds me of how I used to sign my name in junior high. Don’t know why I decided to do that. The trend only lasted a few years until I went back to my more normal forward slant.
I’m not sure I want to read something that’s printed in Sans Forgetica. But maybe I should because supposedly that odd backward slant and letter breaks make the brain work just a little harder, hard enough you remember more about what you read.
Or so the researchers say.
I found out about this font from an article my local newspaper picked up from the Washington Post.
It’s an interesting idea. I sure would like to remember more of what I read. Sometimes I zone out while I’m reading a page, not really remembering much about it later. That’s usually when I’m tired or distracted. If I had to pay a tiny bit more attention to the words, I could see myself remembering more.
The font was developed by researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. It was created by a multidisciplinary team of designers and behavioral scientists. This 45 second YouTube video tells you a little bit more:
If you want to find out even more, including the science behind the font, go here: http://sansforgetica.rmit/
I downloaded it and changed the font in an old Word document to Sans Forgetica so I could try it out. It was a little difficult to read, but not all that hard. Looked very strange on the page, though.
Maybe one of these days Sans Forgetica will end up a font you can select on your Kindle. That could be interesting.
You can download it from http://sansforgetica.rmit and try it out yourself. There’s also a Chrome browser extension.
