Famous Quotes from Type Designers

[superkhy]

as much as i love type, i've got to disagree with this guy:

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

[Miss Tiffany]

I needed this for TypeCon this past July. However, keep them coming as I think others might find this a fun resource in the future.

Glad to see people are still posting.

[dberlowgone]

Of all the achievements of the human mind, the birth of an elephant is the most momentous.
— Frederic Goudy

{what I read when I first saw the quote.}

[dezcom]

That's an eary quote David, you must have truncated one of the words :-)

ChrisL

[alfabet]

Down with Univers! Long live Gill Sans!
-- Leo Maggs
in Types Best Remembered/Best Forgotten , ISBN 1884606008

[alfabet]

"By the year 2000 every secretary will have a favorite typeface."
(or was it font?)"
-- Roger Black (possibly at Type90 in Oxford, England)

[alfabet]

"Typography? Aaah, lots of fun--no money!"
-- unknown passanger on a train from Gatwick Airport to London, England, after asking me what I do for a living. I was on my way to Type90 A.Typ.I conference in Oxford.

[hrant]

David, spooky: although I think I'd never seen that exact quote before, I actually read alphabet for elephant! Only your qualification made me go back and see elephant. I guess being very familiar with Goudy's strong* affection for the Latin alphabet, the power of suggestion skewed the bouma to an extent I don't think I've ever experienced before. Wow.

* To me, overly so.

hhp

[Miguel Sousa]

Somewhere around now my brain explodes, leaving a real mess on the dining room table where I do most of the work on my laptop.
Thomas Phinney

[Miguel Sousa]

I mean, ωhat the fυck?
John Hudson

[timotheus]

"The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring." -- Warren Chappell

[roballoo]

This one has always stuck with me:

"To be married to a wife who can set type is happiness indeed."
~ Walter Tracy, Letters of Credit

I think this would be a great quote for the typographer matchmaking service I plan on starting :)

[Robert Fripp]

And I'm grateful that Will Burtin imported Helvetica to North America in 1958, just a year after Max Miedinger developed it in Zurich. What a super font. Where would we be without it?

[Robert Fripp]

And I'm grateful that Will Burtin imported Helvetica to North America in 1958, just a year after Max Miedinger developed it in Zurich. What a super font. Where would we be without it?

[fontplayer]

"When a type design is good it is not because each individual letter of the alphabet is perfect in form, but because there is a feeling of harmony and unbroken rhythm that runs through the whole design, each letter kin to every other and to all." - F. Goudy

[fontplayer]

Originally I thought this was quotes from famous Type Designers, and I'm not sure this is a famous quote, but I kind of like it. I couldn't bring myself to actually insert one for effect though.

Font is Cheapskate by Pat Broderick. Quote is by Susanna Sturgis

[v-six]

I saw one of Gill's grumpy quotes in here, and figured that I'd add another from An Essay On Typography.

[Writing] is in fact an entirely outworn, decayed and corrupt convention whose chief & most conspicuous character is its monumental witness to the conservatism, laziness and irrationality of men and women.

I'm counting down the days until I turn into a didact!

[hrant]

One of my favorite news items of the new millennium:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/3103421.stm

hhp

[v-six]

Nice link hrant, I bet that would have made Gill all sorts of happy!

[andi emery]

In anticipation of TypeCon2006:

"Typomania is curable but not fatal. Unfortunately."
— Erik Spiekermann, TypeCon2005

"Slikify it"
— Erik Spiekermann, TypeCon2005, in reference to the redigitizing of the FF Bau font

"We're very concerned with language and how language works. We're trying to engage people rather than dictate how they should be thinking."
— Neville Brody, TypeCon2005

"Its focus wasn't on the written word but how the word was written".
— Neville Brody, TypeCon2005, in reference to Fuse Magazine

[pimentel]

"The Ardent Hymn that Unites Peoples"
— Pablo Neruda, Ode to Typography

not a designer, but quite typelover to put on.

[acrobat]

"One of the many unforseen consequences of typography, the rise of nationalism is maybe the best known"
Marshall McLuhan

(but I can't find the source. I could be misquoting slightly)

[Renaissance Man]

“Of the many unforeseen consequences of typography, the emergence of nationalism is, perhaps, the most familiar.”

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

[Si_Daniels]

Marshall McLuhan, what font did he design again?

Cheers, Si

[hrant]

Wasn't it WTC Our Bodoni or something?

hhp