Does the typeface on album cover influence expectations and perception of music?

Journal article

CD and digital album covers are part of the music purchase/consumption experience; yet, very little is known about how album cover design influences people’s expectations concerning, and their perception of, music. This article explores the effect of the typeface curvilinearity of album cover design on people’s expectations and perception of music. Typeface curvilinearity has been shown to influence expectations across other sensory modalities, such as taste (gustation). Across 3 studies, we demonstrate how angular versus rounded typeface can impact expectations concerning how the music will sound. We also demonstrate how angular and rounded typefaces influence emotion ratings of actual music samples. In Experiment 1, typeface curvilinearity influenced people’s expectations of music, with participants expecting the music to sound more angular, masculine, fast, rough, happy, evil, violent, exciting, and active when the typeface on the faux CD album cover was angular compared with when it was round. Conversely, participants expected the music to sound more round, feminine, slow, smooth, sad, good, gentle, calm, and passive when the typeface was round than when it was angular. Experiment 2 demonstrated that typeface curvilinearity influenced people’s ratings of emotional valence but not arousal in neutral music (i.e., music that is considered neither round nor angular). Specifically, participants evaluated the music as sounding more pleasant when the CD cover featured round typeface. Finally, in Experiment 3, we did not find evidence that CD album cover typeface influences people’s perception of arousal or valance of music when the music itself is rated as sounding highly round or angular. These results will be of interest to designers and marketing experts when creating CD covers, logos, posters, and lyric videos.

Authors: Venkatesan, T; Wang, QJ; Spence, C

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Psychological Association
• Journal: Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 487-503
• Publication date: 2020-08-27
• Acceptance date: 2020-04-14
• DOI: 10.1037/aca0000330
• EISSN: 1931-390X
• ISSN: 1931-3896
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR