Famous Quotes from Type Designers

[andi emery]

I found another version of Beatrice Warde's quote and think this one is better:

"People who love ideas must have a love of words, and that means, given a chance, they take a vivid interest in the clothes which words wear."

And two more:

"Typography, a perfect fusion of form and meaning in which beauty is born, is raised from mere craft and can claim the title of a philosophy; for it also includes ethics, that enobling factor of man's destiny. Thus the printed word is in touch with the spirit." - Raul Mario Rosarivo, 1951.

"Any work of art that makes us feel the artist tried too hard lacks clarity."
Clayton Whitehill, The Moods of Type, 1947

[Norbert Florendo]

Some additional info on Erik Spiekermann's paraphrase of Goudy's quote --

Source:
Stop Stealing Sheep
& find out how type works
Erik Spiekermann & E.M. Ginger
First printing: December 1992
Copyright © 1993 Adobe Systems

On the first page of text, Erik added a sidebar to explain his use of Goudy's quote:

In 1936, Frederic Goudy was in New York City to receive an award for excellence in type design. Upon accepting a certificate, he took one look at it and declared that "Anyone who would letterspace black letter would steal sheep."

Eric goes on to mention:

You might have noticed that our book cover reads "lower case," while here it reads "black letter" -- two very different things.

He then added a small sample of CAPITALS, lower case and black letter (printed in black letter) to illustrate the difference to the uninformed reader.

Eric continues:

We're not sure how "black letter" got changed to "lower case," but we've always known it to be the latter; whichever way, it makes infinite sense.

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Yes, I'm old, but I don't shag sheep!

[vinceconnare]

'If you don't get your type warm it will be just a smooth, commonplace, third-rate piece of good machine technique - no use at all for setting down warm human ideas - just a box full of rivets... By jickity, I'd like to make a type that fitted 1935 all right enough, but I'd like to make it warm - so full of blood and personality that it would jump at you.
From Dwiggins fictional argument over the modern age of steel and speed.
William Addison Dwiggins

[Bert Vanderveen]

Googled with "letterspace sheep Goudy":

http://www.eyewire.com/magazine/columns/robin/blackletter/

Blackletter it appears to be. Confirmed by Wikipedia (?):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Goudy

[thierry blancpain]

Helvetica is the jeans, and Univers the dinner jacket. Helvetica is here to stay . Adrian Frutiger

In a way, The Beatles are the Helvetica of pop; just like Helvetica is The Beatles of typefaces . Experimental Jetset

If you have no intuitive sense of design, then call yourself an "information architect" and only use Helvetica . David Carson

Anyone who uses Helvetica knows nothing about typefaces . Wolfgang Weingart

I discovered that I never really used Helvetica but I like to look at it. I like the VW beetle, too, although I've never driven one . Stefan Sagmeister

I have never designed a logotype without first trying it in Helvetica. It is still the most versatile, classic and readable of all typefaces. Steff Geissbuhler

Any good typeface can be completely destroyed when misused or extensively overused. Helvetica seemed to sustain a beating like no other. Still fresh, still popular Helvetica is king . Alexander Gelman

There was once a typeface that had the reputation of being more legible and functional than all the others. It was used everywhere and for everything, from signs to logos. Then one day readers couldn't stand seeing it anymore and decided to stop reading it – despite its superior legibilty. Bit by bit designers forgot about it and it was only used by lay people. Then it was rediscovered for a while and in fashion again. Even books were published about it . Ruedi Baur

Helvetica is the typeface for a deserted island . Friedrich Friedl

We hate to like Helvetica . Hamish Muir

I remember a time at Yale when my work was being critiqued by Paul Rand. Mr. Rand told me only to use Helvetica as a display face never in text, then he squinted, leaned in, and whispered in my ear, "because Helvetica looks like dogshit in text" . Kyle Cooper

(all from the flyer to the book «Helvetica - Homage to a Typeface», edited by lars müller)
12 x 16 cm, 256 pages, 800 illustrations, hardcover.
--- more infos on www.lars-mueller-publishers --

[hankzane]

Hey, what's going on!? Why hasn't anyone quoted me yet?

[andi emery]

"I'm also interested in calligraphy and occasional book-burning." - Sergej Malinovski

(careful what you wish for... : ) )

[andi emery]

"In former times producing a typeface was an effort architectural in scale. A typeface was exquisitely expensive to cut. The choice to make one had a you-bet-your-company gravity to it." - Mike Parker, Bitstream

"Set a page in Fournier against another in Caslon and another in Plantin and it is as if you heard three different people delivering the same discourse — each with impeccable pronunciation and clarity, yet each through the medium of a different personality."
- Beatrice Warde, 1933

"Discipline in typography is a prime virtue. Individuality must be secured by means that are rational. Distinction needs to be won by simplicity and restraint. It is equally true that these qualities need to be infused wiht a certain spirit and vitality, or they degenerate into dullness and mediocrity." - Stanley Morison

[jim_rimmer]

"If you like what you do, and you’re lucky enough to be good at it, do it for that reason."

Phil Grimshaw

[dezcom]

"Bring back the old Typophile"
-- Sergej

ChrisL

[andi emery]

I found this in David Jury's About Face: Reviving the rules of Typography, 2004. It's an anonymous quote and not really about typefaces per se, but I thought you'd enjoy it nonetheless:

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word
And weight four it too say
Weather eye yam wrong or write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soo as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the era rite
Its rare lee ever wrong.
Eye have rune this poem threw it
I am shore yore pleased two no
its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me so.

[sarahkoz]

"…a work of art, i.e. a thing made by a man who, however laughable it may seem to men of business, loves God and does what he likes, who serves his fellow men because he is wrapped up in serving God — to whom the service of God is so commonplace that it is as much bad form to mention it as among men of business it is bad form to mention profits."

"I think it is generally agreed that picture writing was the beginning of our lettering. You might wish to communicate something to someone at a distance. If you have no letters or none common both to you & your correspondent, what else can you do but draw a picture? — the language of pictures is common to all. After a time your pictures are used to signify words and not simply things, and as the system develops and communications become more precise, the pictures become simpler and simpler, more & more conventional, and they come to signify single sounds rather than whole words. And the pictures, by now, have ceased to be pictures. They are, by now, hardly recognizable as representations of things: they are conventional signs, & their pictorial origin is forgotten."

–Eric Gill, An Essay on Typography, 1936

[vinceconnare]

"A typeface is an alpahbet in a straightjacket"
- Alan Fletcher

[William Berkson]

I think this is from "Letters of Credit" by Walter Tracy, but I can't put my hand on it at the moment:

"A great typeface is not a collection of beautiful letters, but a beautiful collection of letters."

[parker]

I think Matthew Carter said that (Logo, Font & Lettering Bible)

[Norbert Florendo]

William, do you have a copy of Walter Tracy's "Letters of Credit"?
If not, I can check the quote this evening at home.

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Yes, I'm old, but I'm back in style!

[William Berkson]

Norbert, I have it, but I seem to have misplaced it (arrrrghh! as Charlie Brown used to say).

[William Berkson]

My copy of Leslie Cabarga's 'Bible' is to hand. On p. 200 the quote from Matthew Carter is

"As the saying goes, type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters."

So Carter felt he was quoting someone else. Maybe Tracy?

[lorp]

“You can do a good ad without good typography, but you can't do a great ad without good typography.”
Herb Lubalin

Source:
Herb Lubalin obituary, Baseline issue four, TSI Typographic Systems International Limited, 1981

[hrant]

You have pre-#10 issues of Baseline?!

hhp

[lorp]

This one was £2 at the Bristol Book Barn. It has only 20 pages but every article is very readable today. Excellent short pieces on New Johnston, Renault, Usherwood's Caxton, Baskerville and Adrian Frutiger. (I give out that Book Barn link reluctantly. On the road to Bath, it is a kind of purgatory for books: a cold, depressing place with free instant coffee. But you have to check it every now and then.)

[dberlowgone]

type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters = Tracy

[lorp]

"From an early age he loved letters in the literal rather than literary sense."
Timothy Rogers, writing of Will Carter

"It is a rarer gift to lay words out properly than to write them"
Nicholas Barker, writing of Will Carter

"The seventies were my fattest decade. Overall I think the seventies were distinctly bulbous. People looked chunky, typefaces were rounded, writing implements penile."
Will Self

[Norbert Florendo]

There is a distinct advantage in being a practising typographer when it comes to deciding on a new typeface design. There seems little sense in designing faces that will not be profitable for the typesetter and it happens too often that designers tend to go down just one path as opposed to designing the variety of faces needed to ensure a good mix. As a result, their designs tend to look too much like each other.

Les Usherwood
Article on release of TSI Caxton (pages 6 -- 9)
Baseline, International Typographics Magazine, Issue four

Oddly enough, I also have a copy of Baseline issue four. Somehow it managed to survive in my old files.

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Yes, I'm old, but I found my Baseline!

[vinceconnare]

Hello
My name is German Bold Italic
I am a type face
Which you have never heard before
Which you have never seen before
I can compliment you well
Especially in red
Extremely in green
Maybe in blue blue blue

You will like my sense of style
You will like my sense of style

I fit like a glove - ooh!

Gut ja!
Gut ja!

-Kylie Minogue (said it sung it)