Studies about people's reactions to fonts and color schemes?

Question

I'm a pianist, composer, and teacher, and I'm building a website to promote myself. I want the site to convey both a sense of elegance and old-world discipline, but also sleek modernity. I was going to ask the wonderful experts here what fonts I should try to use, but I realized that's a very subjective question that would probably get closed, so instead I'm asking if there have ever been studies done that have tried to understand how people react to and perceive different fonts (or color schemes, or just any design element I suppose. It's all useful). Has there ever been work like that done? Are there people out there figuring out exactly what font to use to get people to think you're cutting edge or hard-working? Or have these remained simply subjective design choices?

Answer 1

What you're talking about is UX/UI design. For the most part, it is subjective. That said, companies, like Google, spend a lot of time and money determining what fonts and colors, as well as things like sizes of text, how to arrange information on a website, and so on, would work best for not only their brand but make visiting their site a pleasant and easy experience for everyone. It's a very large subject, and there's not enough room here to answer it. However, a good place to start would be WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines). You can also Google something like: web design best practices. That'll bring up quite a bit of information.