Famous Quotes from Type Designers

[Terrence Chouinard]

Plenty of white space and generous line spacing,
and don’t make the type size too miserly.
Then you will be assured of a product fit for a king.

GIAMBATTISTA BODONI

[Terrence Chouinard]

A good typographer does what he should do,
not what he wants to do.

MICHAEL RUSSEM / MICHAEL BIXLER

Often said & written by friend Michael Russem, but just as often cited by our mentor Michael Bixler

[Terrence Chouinard]

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


MATTHEW CARTER

[Terrence Chouinard]

Standardization, instead of individualization.
Cheap books, instead of private press editions.
Active literature, instead of passive leather bindings.

JAN TSCHICHOLD

[Terrence Chouinard]

By a typographer, I do not mean a printer,
as he is vulgarly accounted. By a typographer,
I mean such as one, who by his own judgement,
from solid reasoning within himself,
can either perform, or direct others to perform
from the beginning to the end,
all the handy-works & physical operations
relating to typographie.

JOSEPH MOXON

[J.Montalbano]

Originally published in U&lc.

"I think it's rather difficult to create a new typeface design, or for that matter, to create a new anything that's in everyday use. A new piece of music would parallel the creation of a new typeface. For example, the notes of music don't change, and the letters of the alphabet don't change, either. It's a matter of how they're put together. The most important feature must be that its newness has a reflection all its own and fits into the pattern of today's generation of graphic designers. The new creation must have something in its character that makes the potential user sit up and take notice. These typographic traits could create a popular demand but we must also consider that this popularity may only be a temporary. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I know we all feel our designs will last forever, but some things like music don't last either. It's like 'here today and forgotten tomorrow.' Anyway, you and I can be sure of one thing: the number of typefaces will surely increase." —Ed. Benguiat

[dezcom]

James,

Once in a while you get something like the Bach B minor Mass or Beethoven's 9th and they stick around for a few hundred years. Of course, many of us would be happy if one of our faces lasted as long as "Cant Get No Satisfaction" ;-)

[J.Montalbano]

Chris,

Most will likely end up as "Incense and Peppermints"

[dezcom]

More likely, the B side of a cover version of "Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain" :-)

[quadibloc]

Surely you mean "MacArthur Park".

[dezcom]

Damn, I knew there was something wrong with that title!

[Eric Kelsey]

“The advent of the computer generated the
phenomena called desktop publishing. This
enabled anyone who could type the freedom of
using any available typeface and do any kind of
distortion. It was a disaster of mega proportions.
A cultural pollution of incomparable dimension.
As I said, at the time, if all people doing desktop
publishing were doctors we would all be dead!”

— Massimo Vignelli

[J.Montalbano]

I think that the designers of menswear had a similar feeling towards Massimo's menswear collection as Massimo has towards desktop publishing.

I would dismiss anything Massimo says regarding type or typography. Additionally, he is not and has never been a type designer, so his quote does not belong in this thread.

[Eric Kelsey]

You're right. He isn't a type designer. I didn't read the title all that closely.

I don't agree with some of his opinions. I am particularly referring to his statement that there aren't more than a handful of good fonts. I wouldn't dismiss anything he has to say about type or typography though.

I like this quote and I think he makes a good point. It has become much easier to make a typeface due to the computer and the result is a lot of bad typefaces. It is clever the way he compares desktop publishing to the medical industry.

[J.Montalbano]

Just another one of the "old guys" complaining about the computer.

The computer may have made it a bit easier to make a typeface, and there are no doubt many really crappy typefaces out there, but it has also give the graphic design industry the largest collection of great typefaces in history.

As I said, at the time, if all people doing desktop publishing were doctors we would all be dead

More crap from Massimo. Following his analogy; If some were doctors, yes some might be dead, but the others would have saved an awful lot of lives.

[Eric Kelsey]

Very good point that by making it easier to produce a typeface the computer also made it possible to produce more good typefaces. I like your optimistic view on the the subject.

[dezcom]

Massimo sounds like he was just lamenting the loss of revenue to others. In his era (and mine) designers made most of their money on fairly mundane work that was simple to design and could easily be turned over to lesser-paid staff. We used to call this grunt work. This freed up the top-dogs to spend more time on show pieces yet still collect on the grunt work done by their staff. It was a steady moneymaker with plenty of repeat business--as in "update this monthly catalog with new prices". Yes, the computer turned this into a database publishing issue with automated regional versioning and distribution. Yes, there also was a huge birth of hack designers now in the workforce who knew noting about design but plenty about software usage. So goes the world. We have always had competition to deal with. Some of it was only in price and not in quality. If a client didn't give a damn about good design, he hired a hack and saved a few bucks. That is the way the world works, Massimo. Get over it already--it is 2011 now, not 1965. The NYC grip also faded with the internet. You did not have to be a 5 minute cab ride to all the big clients to get their work any more. Sure, now you can get both crap design and good design from Manhattan to Malaysia. Welcome to the global economy, we are all better off for it except a very few of the elite and late adopters perhaps.

[gvsree]

If beauty of music is between the notes, beauty of typography is in the white spaces: counters, letter space, word space and leading !!

[paul d hunt]

Bill, I think you have successfully pinned your quote to Walter Tracy thanks to the wonders of the internet. :^p Did you ever find a positive attribution of this quote to him? I could not find it in a search of Letters of Credit on google books.

[William Berkson]

Paul, I couldn't find it flipping through Letters of Credit either, which was the reason I was hesitant in my original post in this thread. I still don't know. Just checking, I do see that Tina Parker, above, is right about it being in Font, Logo, and Lettering Bible by Leslie Cabarga. And there it quotes Matthew Carter (p. 200): "As the saying goes, type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters." Evidently Carter thinks he got it from somewhere else. I believe that in a Typophile thread, David Berlow confirmed that it was originally Walter Tracy, but with no reference.

It could be that I heard it aurally from Matthew Carter at TypeCon, with a reference to Tracy, but I can't remember. So to solve the mystery you might ask Matthew Carter.

[paul d hunt]

I thought it was MC too, until I dug up this thread. But your wording of the same sentiment from this thread can be found in several places on the net with attribution to Walter Tracy, but never with any reference. :^/

[William Berkson]

As I said, Carter, as quoted in Cabarga, indicates that it's not original with him, and he was just quoting it. So it's not solved. Berlow seemed to be sure it was Tracy. It would be nice to nail down the source, because it's something like the first rule of type design.

[dezcom]

I have heard that quote many times, including from, Carter. I don't recall him being very positive about the attribution.

[dezcom]

"... if all people doing desktop
publishing were doctors we would all be dead!”

— Massimo Vignelli"

And if all doctors had stopped learning and never used any tools developed after 1960, how many of us would now be dead? Me, for sure--thanks to a quadruple bypass operation.

[William Berkson]

Dezcom: more than a beautiful group of letters! Keep on ticking and drawing:)