Font Freaks

Because our church displays the text of our worship songs on a large screen during the service I get to use fonts, and lots of them.  In my line of work, fontology has become more and more fun, complex and strategized than ever before.   This may seem like a mundane task, however I actually enjoy spending time analyzing different fonts and their singability along with the mood or pace of songs.  Some fonts read better over video display.  Some fonts take too long for the brain to process which makes "singing along" for our congregation a challenge.

Two common mistakes I regularly see in other churches is (1) the undervalue of fontology - keeping things too simple and not using this great tool to enhance worship and (2) the overuse of fonts, font styles, font sizes and colors.  I do believe that like in all other aspects of visual media, the fonts we use can enhance or detract from the music and the message.

I previously posted an article on visual media worship tips.  In that post I included a few of my rules for fontology.  That can be viewed here.

I've also recently read a post by Seth Godin regarding fonts in marketing (I Love Typefaces).  I thought it was a good read.

Comments

[Bart Blair]

Ok. So I made up the word "fontolgy." Sounds cool though, doesn't it? I had a linguistics prof in university who said if we use a word in speech and people know what we're talking about, then - ta da - it's a real word. Maybe I've coined something new!

[Shelby]

Fontology? :) Never heard that one before. I thought it was typeography. Of course fonts and typefaces are two very different things...