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Researchers at the School of Design of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and Behavioural Business Lab. in Australia have developed an entirely new font designed to help you better remember your study notes.

The font is a sans serif style typeface, with two unusual features: It slants slightly left, which is a rarely used design principle in typography, and it is full of holes. Those holes have a purpose though. They make Sans Forgetica harder to read, tricking your brain into using “deeper cognitive processing” and promoting better memory retention. The psychological learning principle is known as “desirable difficulty” and that obstruction – the holes – mean you dwell on each word just a little bit longer.

Stephen Banham, a designer and RMIT typography lecturer, and his team tested the font’s efficacy along with other intentionally complicated fonts on 400 students in lab and online experiments. The students were divided into 2 groups and given to read the same text, printed in Arial and Sans Forgetica fonts. Then quizzed them. It was found that the students remembered the Sans Forgetica text for 7 percent better than the Arial text. Thus, Sans Forgetica showed the biggest leap in remembering.

Researchers stressed that the font should not be used everywhere. They suspect that if we get too used to reading in Sans Forgetica, its memory-boosting effect will fade.

“We believe it is best used to emphasize key sections, like a definition, in texts rather than converting entire texts or books,” Banham tells.

According to him, this font is a best tool for students to help them better remember their study notes. So far, the font is available for Latin only. The researchers have released the font for free at the official website of the project www.sansforgetica.rmit, where it can be downloaded or added as a Chrome browser extension.