Typography Quotes: Typography Quotes

I’ve come to think that Helvetica was never intended to be the cold, perfect, rational typeface it’s portrayed to be. There is a subtle warmth in the shapes that was lost over the years.

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

I have come to think that Helvetica

A good typographer is always a good reader.

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

A good typographer is always a good reader.

Type design: an exacting, arcane craft that is underappreciated for its impact on how people communicate and receive communication.

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

Type design: an exacting, arcane craft

Words have meaning. Type has spirit. The combination is spectacular.

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

Words have meaning

Trajan is the Arial of film posters.

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

Trajan is the Arial of film posters

Type and typography—what you do and how you do it—are both science and art.

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

Type and typography

When I put my pen to a blank sheet, black isn’t added but rather the white sheet is deprived of light. […] Thus I also grasped that the empty spaces are the most important aspect of a typeface.

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

The empty spaces

Typography must be as beautiful as a forest, not like the concrete jungle of the tenements. It gives distance between the trees, the room to breathe and allow for life.

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

Typography must be as beautiful

If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The spoon and the letter are tools; one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page ... When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful.

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

the shape of your spoon

Geometry can produce legible letters, but art alone makes them beautiful. Art begins where geometry ends, and imparts to letters a character transcending mere measurement.

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

geometry can produce legible letters

We are interpreters — not merely translators between sender and receiver. What we say and how we say it makes a difference. If we want to speak to people, we need to know their language. In order to design for understanding, we need to understand design.

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

We are interpreteters

The first one hundred fonts are the most painful.

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

The first one hundred fonts

From all these experiences the most important thing I have learned is that legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader.

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

From all these experiences the most important thing I have learned

A life rich in reading is the only path to thinking and creating.

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

A life rich in reading

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.

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

I discovered that I never really used Helvetica

The first word of the first line is the critical word of that particular body of text. Let it start flush, at least.

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

The first word of the first line is the critical word

90 percent of design is typography. And the other 90 percent is whitespace.

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

90 percent of design is typography.

Typefaces are not only there to be read, you also see them.

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

Typefaces are not only there to be read

If we think it concerns us, we read everything.

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

If we think it concerns us, we read everything

why do we write and print with two different alphabets simultaneously? we do not speak a capital A and a small a …

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

why do we write and print with two different alphabets

Most people who use Helvetica use it because it’s ubiquitous. It’s like going to McDonalds instead of thinking about food. Because it’s there, it’s on every street corner. So let’s eat crap, because it’s on the corner.

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

Most people who use Helvetica use it because it’s ubiquitous

There are so many young and talented type designers today. I think we are in a kind of type design renaissance.

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

There are so many talented type designers today

A collection of Typefounder’s Specimen Books arranged chronologically will, perhaps, furnish a more useful history of the art than any that could be written.

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

A collection of Typefounder’s Specimen Books

A typeface family is an accomplishment on the order of a novel, a feature film screenplay, a computer language design and implementation, a major musical composition, a monumental sculpture, or other artistic or technical endeavors that consume a year or more of intensive creative effort.

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

Lettering differs from type in the same way that modeling clay differs from LEGO® bricks.

Mon, 25 Jun 2018 10:34:50 +0000

The good, old legible types formerly used in print are being scorned in these days (on account of the new ones being cut every day). And yet, however many new faces may be cut, when they have been forgotten and no more new ones can be imagined, the old ones will once more be produced under the pretence that they are new, as is the case with other things.

Fri, 10 Aug 2018 06:13:15 +0000

Futura on a screen is like a cat in a bathtub.

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 14:13:22 +0000

The only place Avant Garde looks good is in the words Avant Garde.

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 14:59:22 +0000

Distance – distance from tradition, from technology, from prejudice, that’s actually is what we need. We are always burdened down by what we know. We are permanently preoccupied with what we are doing and always slightly suspicious towards new things coming our way, things which can help us reach new goals, but might make it necessary to re-think and remind us: don’t stop, don’t stagnate! (…)

Fri, 14 May 2021 11:52:11 +0000

[…] There is a hidden talent in every human being. As a teacher it is my task to spot that. Even if a hundred people are saying, he or she can’t do anything, got bad marks or dropped out of school – that’s not important. This is point zero, let’s get to work. […]

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 08:28:09 +0000