Type design moves at the pace of the most conservative reader. The good type-designer therefore realizes that, for a new font to be successful, it has to be so good that only very few recognize its novelty.
design typography typeface type-design
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.
typography typeface type-design
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.
typography type-design
Type production has gone mad, with its senseless outpouring of new types… only in degenerate times can personality (opposed to the nameless masses) become the aim of human development.
The shapes of letter do not derive their beauty from any sensual or sentimental reminiscences. No one can say the O's roundness appeals to us only because it is like that of an apple or of a girl's breast or of the full moon. Letters are things, not pictures of things.
expression typography type-design
To me designing has never been a job or profession. It's a way of life, like a priest or rabbi.
design way-of-life typography type-design
The contributions that one makes in typography, design, and art in general cannot be, and must not be measured on how much money is involved. That would lead to total chaos. The word itself (contribution) is to give to a common purpose.
design typography type-design
Perfect typography is certainly the most elusive of all arts. Sculpture in stone alone comes near it in obstinacy.
art typography type-design
Each letter should have a flirtation with the one next to it.
humor typography type-design
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 enabling factor of man's destiny. Thus the printed word is in touch with the spirit.
philosophy typography type-design
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.
If you have no intuitive sense of design, then call yourself an "information architect" and only use Helvetica.
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.
There is a distinct advantage in being a practicing 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.
In the fields of Printing & Graphic Design, it is generally agreed that the poet in our midst is the type designer.
Type is like music in having its own beauty, and in being beautiful as an accompaniment and interpretation; and typography can be used to express a state of the soul, like the other arts and crafts. But like them it is too often used mechanically, and so the full expressiveness of this medium is unrealized. If it is used according to a rule or recipe, it becomes dull and loses vividness. Type appears at first to be a rigid medium; but like other rigid media, it is plastic to the living spirit of a craftsman.
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.
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