Typography Quotes: Typography Quotes

The most popular typefaces are the easiest to read; their popularity has made them disappear from conscious cognition. It becomes impossible to tell if they are easy to read because they are commonly used, or if they are commonly used because they are easy to read.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

The most popular typefaces …

Fonts turn words into stories.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Fonts turn words into stories

Of all the achievements of the human mind, the birth of the alphabet is the most momentous.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Of all the achievements …

People only talk about typefaces if they are type designers, or graphic designers, or are angry about them.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

People only talk about typefaces

There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

There are now about as many different varieties

We are type designers, punch cutters, type founders, compositors, printers and bookbinders from conviction and with passion. Not because we are insufficiently talented for other, higher, things, but because to us the highest things stand in the closest kinship to our own crafts.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

We are type designers …

Comic Sans – If you love it, you don’t know much about typography. If you hate it, you really don’t know much about typography either.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Comic Sans – If you love it …

Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing. No argument or consideration can absolve typography from this duty.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Typography has one plain duty …

Type design moves at the pace of the most conservative reader. The good type-designer therefore realizes that, for a new fount to be successful, it has to be so good that only very few recognize its novelty.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Type design moves at the pace …

Type well used is invisible as type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Type well used is invisible as type …

You can do a good ad without good typography, but you can't do a great ad without good typography.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

You can do a good ad

Type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Type is a beautiful group of letters

Typography is two-dimensional architecture, based on experience and imagination, and guided by rules and readability. And this is the purpose of typography: The arrangement of design elements within a given structure should allow the reader to easily focus on the message, without slowing down the speed of his reading.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Typography is two-dimensional architecture

I am really interested in type that isn't perfect. Type that reflects more truly the imperfect language of an imperfect world inhabited by imperfect beings.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

I am really interested in type

By all means break the rules, and break them beautifully, deliberately, and well. That is one of the ends for which they exist.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

By all means break the rules

Most people think typography is about fonts. Most designers think typography is about fonts. Typography is more than that, it’s expressing language through type. Placement, composition, typechoice.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Most people think typography is about fonts

Typographical design should perform optically what the speaker creates through voice and gesture of his thoughts.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Typographical design should perform optically

Lettering is a precise art and strictly subject to tradition. The ‘New Art ’ notion that you can make letters whatever shapes you like,is as foolish as the notion, if anyone has such a notion, that you can make houses any shapes you like. You can’t, unless you live all by yourself on a desert island.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Lettering is a precise art

Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to. But this is not to say that because we have got used to something demonstrably less legible than something else would be if we could get used to it, we should make no effort to scrap the existing thing. This was done by the Florentines and Romans of the fifteenth century; it requires simply good sense in the originators & good will in the rest of us.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Legibility amounts to what one is accustomed to

Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Typography is the craft

Typography provides the most characteristic picture of a period

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Typography provides the most

She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

She feels in italics

As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, “Also Georgiana Wife of the Above”, I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

As I never saw my father or my mother

Perfect typography is certainly the most elusive of all arts. Sculpture in stone alone comes near it in obstinacy.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Perfect typography is certainly

We cannot alter the essential shape of a single letter without at the same time destroying the familiar printed face of our language, and thereby rendering it useless.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

We cannot alter the essential shape of a single letter

Typography is a hidden tool of manipulation within society. All schools should be teaching typography; we should be fundamentally aware of how typographic language is forming out assholes.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Typography is a hidden tool

It is almost impossible to look and read at the same time: they are different actions.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

It is almost impossible to look

Type design is a job where there is no room for easy solutions. Letters can perhaps be designed quickly using a compass and ruler, but these are unsuitable for a typeface, as they fail to satisfy the subtle optical laws that make reading enjoyable.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Type design is a job

You cannot acquire experience by working with a computer, but rather with a pen, with paint and brush, with the hands and with much effort. Only then can the New arise in your head.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

You cannot acquire experience by working with a computer

The better people communicate, the greater will be the need for better typography—expressive typography.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

The better people communicate