Selected Appropriated Quotes and Words of Wisdom

Typography for Graphic Design Assignment 2 Selection of Quotes about Typography, Design + the Creative Process

Asymmetry is the rhythmic expression of funtional design. In addition to being more logical, asymmetry has the advantage that its complete appearance is far more optically effective than symmetry.

Jan Tschichold 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.

Adrian Frutiger You cannot understand typography and typefaces without knowledge and you can’t keep that knowledge for only yourself.

Type design is a cultural act, not just a few lines of data in the corner of a hard disk.

Jean-François Porchez As humans, no matter our level of understanding, we are very complex beings with very complex thoughts.

There are ideas that each of us have within our heads that are so different from each other it is mind boggling.

Matthew Carter It’s sort of the atomic level... It would be very unusual to someone to be able to recognize their suit thread by thread – in the same way people don’t recognize typefaces letter by letter on the page.

Matthew Carter 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.

Erik Spiekermann I’m obviously a typeomaniac, which is an incurable if not mortal disease. I can’t explain it.

I just love, I just like looking at type.

Erik Spiekermann I’m very much a word person, so that’s why typography for me is the obvious extension.

It just makes my words visible.

Erik Spiekermann All typefaces are historical.

Jonathan Hoefler An electrician isn’t an opinion former, but a graphic designer is. My argument is that all graphic designers hold high levels of responsibility in society. We take invisible ideas and make them tangible. That’s our job.

Neville Brody Typography is a hidden tool of manipulation within society.

Neville Brody Typography at its best is a visual form of language linking timelessness and time.

Robert Bringhurst

Typography for Graphic Design Assignment 2 Selection of Quotes about Typography, Design + the Creative Process In a badly designed book, the letters mill and stand like starving horses in a field. In a book designed by rote, they sit like stale bread and mutton on the page. In a well-made book, where designer, compositor and printer have all done their jobs, no matter how many thousands of lines and pages, the letters are alive. They dance in their seats. Sometimes they rise and dance in the margins and aisles.

Robert Bringhurst I don’t think that type should be expressive at all. I can write the word “dog” with any typeface and it doesn’t have to look like a dog. But there are people that [think that] when they write “dog” it should bark.

Massimo Vignelli A typeface is an alphabet in a straightjacket.

Alan Fletcher Anyone who uses Helvetica knows nothing about typefaces.

Wolgang Weingart Helvetica was a real step from the 19th century typeface. We were impressed by that because it was more neutral, and neutralism was a word that we loved. It should be neutral. It shouldn’t have a meaning in itself. The meaning is in the content of the text and not in the typeface.

Wim Crouwel Typography is what language looks like.

Ellen Lupton Design is as much an act of spacing as an act of marking.

Ellen Lupton 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.

Zuzana Licko Type is saying things to us all the time. Typefaces express a mood, an atmosphere.

They give words a certain coloring.

Rick Poynor If you make everything bold, nothing is bold.

Art Webb A plain circular bullet is widely disdained for its banality.

Carolina deBartolo The awesome thing about lettering–which is different from many forms of art–is that you can actually see your mistakes. There are sophomore mistakes that people do at the beginning that you spot everywhere.

For example, a lot of people make ‘W’s by turning ‘M’s upside down.

Jessica Hische It is the designer/typographer’s task to match form with content; to create an authoritative document.

Nick Shinn What a designer needs is good taste, an eye for detail, and a sense of which way the cultural wind is blowing.

Nich Shinn

Typography for Graphic Design Assignment 2 Selection of Quotes about Typography, Design + the Creative Process

Every designer or photographer should have an ongoing conversation with the word editor–you are all journalists.

Roger Black Good art inspires. Good design motivates.

Otl Aicher Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.

Paul Rand Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.

Paul Rand Visual communication of any kind, whether persuasive or informative, from billboards to birth announcements, should be seen as the embodiment of form and function; the integration of the beautiful and useful.

Paul Rand 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.

Hermann Zapf Type design is one of the most visible and widespread forms of graphic expression in daily life. It is still not noticed by all readers of newspapers, magazines or books. Nevertheless letter forms reflect the style of a period, and its cultural background.

We are surrounded by them everywhere.

Hermann Zapf Failure is built into creativity...the creative act involves this element of “newness” and “experimentalism,” then one must expect and accept the possibility of failure.

Saul Bass As we become more mature we will learn to master the interplay between the past and the present and not be so self-conscious of our rejection or acceptance of tradition. We will not make the mistake that both rigid modernists and conservatives make, of confusing the quality of form with the specific forms themselves.

Alvin Lustig There are three responses to a piece of design — yes, no, and WOW! WOW is the one to aim for.

Milton Glaser If you can design one thing, you can design everything.

Massimo Vignelli

The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease.

For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design.

Massimo Vignelli Thinking is drawing in your head.

Alan Fletcher

Typography for Graphic Design Assignment 2 Selection of Quotes about Typography, Design + the Creative Process If the bones don’t work you’ve got a pile of skin.

Samuel Antupit Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing.

Emil Ruder The grid system is an aid, not a guarantee. It permits a number of possible uses and each designer can look for a solution appropriate to his personal style. But one must learn how to use the grid ; it is an art that requires practice.

Josef Müller-Brockmann It took me a few seconds to draw it, but it took me 34 years to learn how to draw it in a few seconds.

Paula Scher It’s through mistakes that you actually can grow. You have to get bad in order to get good.

Paula Scher If you do good work for good clients, it will lead to other good work for other good clients. f you do bad work for bad clients, it will lead to other bad work for other bad clients.

Michael Bierut When you make something no one hates, no one loves it.

Tibor Kalman Every Monday morning is new hope.

Maira Kalman Working within the constraints of a problem is part of the fun and challenge of design.

Ellen Lupton The best designers in the world all squint when they look at something. They squint to see the forest from the trees–to find the right balance. Squint at the world. You will see more, by seeing less.

John Maeda If you are going to have less things, they need to be great things.

John Maeda We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.

Bob Ross If print was invented tomorrow, it would be the death of digital.

Vaughan Oliver I don’t see myself as an artist. I work with artists and collaborate with them, but then it becomes graphic design. It’s not an art. I’m a graphic designer.

Vaughan Oliver Design is both a political and cultural force for change, although most designers choose not to think about the power it has.

Jonathan Barnbrook To be a good designer, you would need to have deep and far-reaching interests outside of the profession.

Stef Sagmeister

Typography for Graphic Design Assignment 2 Selection of Quotes about Typography, Design + the Creative Process You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt...or in front of a piece of graphic design.

Stefan Sagmeister Digital design is like painting, except the paint never dries.

Neville Brody Creative people have to believe in the value of their work. If you don’t have any belief then you can’t give anything—designing is an act of giving, and a belief in the value of the work fuels the desire to express something. It’s important to know what your values are and to take care of them.

Peter Saville Never fall in love with an idea. They’re whores. If the one you’re with isn’t doing the job, there’s always, always, always another.

Chip Kidd Commercial Art tries to make you buy things. Graphic Design gives you ideas.

Chip Kidd Design is, literally, purposeful planning. Graphic Design, then, is the form those plans will take.

Chip Kidd I find that for myself, without exception, the more I deal with the work as something that is my own, as something that is personal, the more successful it is.

Marian Bantjes Inspiration is cross-pollinating.

Marian Bantjes Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does.

David Carson Never mistake legibility for communication.

David Carson Design is in everything we make, but it’s also between those things. It’s a mix of craft, science, storytelling, propaganda, and philosophy.

Erik Adigard A type designer must know how type works in a piece of text, he must know what happens with the type on different sorts of paper, he must know how a typeface behaves with different printing techniques.

Martin Majoor Get comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Jessica Walsch 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.

Barry Deck

Typography for Graphic Design Assignment 2 Selection of Quotes about Typography, Design + the Creative Process The letters of the alphabet, the characters of a typeface, are building blocks. Besides being symbols to construct a written language, they can be used to compose any visual impression imaginable. To me, typography is the visual arrangement of letterforms and symbols. Its style creates identity.

Max Kisman 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.

Mark Boulton To push the boundaries you need to know where the edges are.

Mark Boulton In typography there is a fundamental relationship between the physical image of the text and the visual apparatus of the reader.

For 2600 years of making and re-making, the breeding of the Roman letter has been under way. Traditional type sizes are the

product of a lengthy accumulation of human attention....It represents a reduction, a cooking down of the reading and writing experience of many generations.

Sumner Stone For me, typography is a triangular relationship between design idea, typographic elements, and printing technique.

Wolfgang Weingart Minimalism is not a lack of something. It’s simply the perfect amount of something.

Nicholas Burroughs Making good design is easy. It’s polishing the half-assed stuff that takes time.

Stefan G. Bucher Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.

Jeffrey Zeldman The biggest mistake young designers make is that they try to make their advertising look like advertising.

Jeff Goodby Design is a human ritual of understanding.

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

El Lizzitsky Even the best designers produce successful products only if their designs solve the right problems.

A wonderful interface to the wrong features will fail.

Jakob Nielsen A good designer can create a design that accommodates all the constraints and still delivers an elegant, satisfying experience to the user. A great designer can go beyond this and create a design that demonstrates that some of those constraints weren’t really there to begin with.

Jesse James Garrett

Typography for Graphic Design Assignment 2 Selection of Quotes about Typography, Design + the Creative Process Good design is making something intelligible and memorable. Great design is making something memorable and meaningful.

Dieter Rams If something is not good enough, stop doing it.

Jonathan Ive It’s very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.

Jonathan Ive Good is the enemy of great.

Jonathan Ive Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Steve Jobs Form follows function.

Louis Sullivan God is in the details.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Less is more.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Creativity is intelligence having fun.

Albert Einstein Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.

Albert Einstein The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.

Albert Einstein Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. Charles Mingus Copying one person is stealing. Copying 10 is research.

Chet Atkins Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind.

Rudyard Kipling