Laura, from the El Arroyo team, said that the most popular signs are the most that are “relatable and funny to large groups of people.” She added: “We've seen a lot of success with our signs about past elections, and current events such as commentary on the pandemic.” A sign has to be genuinely funny to do well. It also doesn’t hurt if a celebrity shares it on social media!
Recently, Bored Panda spoke about ads, fonts, and the fluency effect with Matt Johnson, Ph.D. He’s a professor of consumer psychology at Hult International Business School and Harvard University, as well as the author of 'Branding that Means Business.’
Professor Johnson explained to us that it’s contrast that really grabs our attention due to how our brains are wired to notice differences in our environments. What this means is that, essentially, the context in which an ad (or in this case, a sign) is placed really matters. If you want to get noticed, you have to stand out from your competitors.
"If the content can’t grab attention and stop the consumer in their tracks, they won’t have the opportunity to appreciate the ad’s quality. This is especially true in the digital environment, where the first job of any piece of content is to stop the thumb. Only after this first step can the quality of the content shine through,” the consumer psychology expert said.
According to the professor, people also find text and faces appealing. "These are special visual stimuli because they drive the brain’s automatic processing. You can’t look at a face without automatically processing its emotion, and you can’t look at a string of words without automatically processing their meaning. Because of this automaticity, these naturally drive attention and are often processed quickly within a visual scene," he said.
Johnson said that when the words are written in a font that’s legible enough, our brains access their meaning first. “Sometimes even before simple features like color,” he said. So a good (i.e. legible) font means you can get your message across as intended, as per the fluency effect.
