Typefaces Quotes

Someday I'll design a typeface without a K in it, and then let's see the bastards misspell my name.

The seventies were my fattest decade. Overall I think the seventies were distinctly bulbous. People looked chunky, typefaces were rounded, writing implements penile.

By the year 2000 every secretary will have a favorite typeface.

How can there be too many typefaces in the world? Are there too many songs, too many books, too many places to go?

At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.

In the new computer age, the proliferation of typefaces and type manipulations represents a new level of visual pollution threatening our culture. Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones, and trash the rest.

It's a cliché, but typefaces are really just ingredients.

All typefaces are historical.

Anyone who uses Helvetica knows nothing about typefaces.

The meaning is in the content of the text and not in the typeface, and that is why we loved Helvetica very much.

Berthold is still a good typeface, but even Berthold has some less than attractive features, and then I just cut them off because I didn't like them.

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

I am sure in some years from now you will see new posters with just white space and four lines in Garamond.

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

I'm not an expert in typefaces that serve scientific writing, but I'd guess that's another dozen or two.

Helvetica is the jeans, and Univers the dinner jacket. Helvetica is here to stay.

I make solutions that nobody wants to problems that don't exist.

I guess if there was a desert island scenario and I only could take one font with me, I guess it would be Helvetica, though it has it's limitations, I think it's incredibly versatile and gets the job done and I also think it's one of the typefaces that will really survive the test of time beyond the next several decades if not into the next century.

I hate to see great works of literature ghettoized, whereas others that conform to the rules, conventions, and procedures of the genre we call literary fiction get accorded greater esteem and privilege. I also have a problem with how books are marketed, with certain cover designs and typefaces. They're often stamped with an identity that has nothing to do with their effect on the reader.

There was a time when most people had a choice between two kinds of personal communication, handwriting or using a typewriter. Today, people are invited to choose from a list of (surprisingly exotic) typefaces every time they turn on their computer. I think this has made everyone more aware of the idea that picking a typeface is a conscious choice.

I think a lot of people overlook the importance of the menu as a marketing tool and a way of communicating to the customer what the ambition of their restaurant is. Not only the typeface and the design, but what is it printed on? Is it cheap-looking? Is it the right kind of paper for that restaurant?

A great typeface is not a collection of beautiful letters, but a beautiful collection of letters.

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.

I grew up in a Cleveland suburb called Parma, Ohio. Somewhere along the way I fell in love with a typeface called Bodoni. It turns out that Giambattista Bodoni had his foundry in Parma, Italy. So I pick Bodoni because us guys from Parma have to stick together.

If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them.

If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later.

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.

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.

Certain kinds of typeface design and typographic design are designed to persuade: we can make this company look modern if we use a crisp sans serif typeface, or we can make this restaurant look like its been around forever if we use typefaces and layout styles that have been around forever too. But there are other categories, and ballot design is one of them, where the goal should be to be purely functional. There have been notable failures in this category.

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.

Type is saying things to us all the time. Typefaces express a mood, an atmosphere. They give words a certain coloring.

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.

It was stone carvers in ancient Rome, scribes in the Middle Ages, all the way through Gutenberg to the present day. That's a pretty long track record. More likely we may reach a point where each one of us is a typographer with our own custom proprietary typeface.

Each typeface is a piece of history, like a chip in a mosaic that depicts the development of human communication. Each typeface is also a visual record of the person who created it - his skill as a designer, his philosophy as an artist, his feeling for... the details of each letter and the resulting impressions of an alphabet or a text line.

When a type design is good it is not because each individual letter of the alphabet is perfect in form, but because there is a feeling of harmony and unbroken rhythm that runs through the whole design, each letter kin to every other and to all.

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

Most people have no idea how much goes into designing a typeface. Twenty-six letters in the alphabet, usually with two versions of each, upper and lower case. Punctuation and alternate characters and numbers - let's not forget numbers - can add another 40 or so.

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.

I believe sans serif typefaces - today upheld as models of neutrality and legibility - were called "Grotesques" in the 19th century because people thought they were hideous. But now we're used to them.