“There are now about as many different varieties of letters as there are different kinds of fools.” Eric Gill

“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.” -Wolfgang Weingart

“Bodoni would be an admirable letter for a death notice!”
- G. W. Ovink

http://www.designingwithtype.com/essays/1_2.html

There’s a lot more there too.

hhp

I’ve tried to find the english translation for this quote by Giambattista Bodoni, but without luck I try to do it myself (from the Swedsih book I have)...

“The letters don’t get their true delight, when done in haste & discomfort, nor merely done with diligence & pain, but first when they are created with love and passion.”

Tiffany, are you sure you have that Goudy quote correct? It is normally cited as ’lowercase’, not ’blackletter’. Letterspacing blackletter is actually a well established convention to indicate emphasis, in the absence of italics, which has been practiced in Germany and other countries with long blackletter traditions, for at least two centuries.

’Continued experiment with dog today’ - Eric Gill

John,
I believe Tiffany got the quote all right.
When Goudy in 1936 recieved a handlettered certificate of excellence set in a heavily letterspaced uppercase blackletter, those were the words he uttered.
The reason why it has changed over the years is not as much a mis-quotation as sometimes is suggested but rather a sort of evolution. I mean, it has a good punch to it, and lower case are easier to relate to.
My guess, for what it’s worth.

ƒ

“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.” —Emil Ruder

ChrisL

“After I came up with the idea to write a book that would, I hoped, become the standard, a sensation and win me the Nobel Prize for Literature, I started to feel uneasy.” —Alessio Leonardi

ChrisL

A type of revolutionary novelty may be extremely beautiful in itself; but, for the creatures of habit that we are, its very novelty tends to make it illegible, at any rate to begin with.
Typography for the Twentieth-Century Reader
Aldous Huxley

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.
First Principles of Typography
Stanley Morison

Type well used is invisible as type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas.
Printing Should Be Invisible
Beatrice Warde

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.
Keynote Speech/Type90
Adrian Frutiger

When we experience disappointment with the relationship with letters let’s not be afraid to do what come naturally to us: Let’s draw.
Graphis Typography 1 (1994)
Gerard Huerta

As we say in Berlin, there are many ways to bake a parrot.
Rhyme & Reason
Erik Spiekermann

Yes, I’m old, but I’m back in style!
Typophile Forum (2005)
Norbert Florendo

Tiffany, John and Fredrik

“Men who would letterspace lower case would shag sheep” - Frederick Goudy

I noticed the discrepancy in the quote a while ago, so i had looked into it. Thats what I came up with. I wonder if there is a definitive source for this.

I saw some letterspaced lowercase the other day. Blarg. I’m sure letterspaced blackletter is equally hideous, never tried it, thats a good thing right?

Tiff, I’ve actually never heard that version before. I’ve heard the ’ lowercase would steel sheep.’ I prefer the ’sheep shag’ version myself, but it’d be nice to find out for sure. It makes more sense if you think about it. Other than being theft of personal property, what is so disgusting about ’stealing’ sheep anyway? So, if stealing sheep isn’t exactly looked upon as repulsive, the shagging makes a little more sense. But I’m no goudy expert.

I’m sure letterspaced blackletter is equally hideous, never tried it, thats a good thing right?

The keynote speaker at the ATypI conference in Copenhagen referred to a lovely typographic metaphor in one of Søren Kierkegaard’s books. In the original, blackletter edition approved by the author, who took a keen interest in the typography of his books, the metaphor relates a feeling of existential alienation and disconnection to being l e t t e r s p a c e d. In a later edition, typeset in antiqua (roman) type, the typesetters interpreted the letterspaced blackletter as italics, as was normal in resetting in antiqua from blackletter originals, and then, since the metaphor was now lost, actually changed the text. So in this later edition the existential alienation was bizarrely likened to being italicised.

It could be this _

“Men who would letterspace blackletter would shag sheep” - Frederick Goudy

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

Yes. Hmm. I think we need to provide bibliographic information as Norbert has done. This will keep me from using quotes that are actually mis-quotes. So, if you can supply bibliography please do, if not still share your quote, maybe someone else will know.

—-

I’ve heard that particular quote so many different ways that I’m not sure which is correct.

The restrictions of two-dimensional communication appealed to my need for structure and my desire to have my work speak for me. The challenge of communicating an idea or feeling within the further confines of the Latin alphabet lad me from graphic design into type design.

Carol Twombly

This one was used on the TypeCon2001 materials:

“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.” - Rudolf Koch

I can’t remember the bibliographic information on this one.
____

About the Goudy quote - I thought it was “leterspace lowercase” and “bugger a sheep”. But I don’t have any bibliographic information to back it up.

“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.”
—Emil Ruder. page 6, “Typographie”, 1967.

“After I came up with the idea to write a book that would, I hoped, become the standard, a sensation and win me the Nobel Prize for Literature, I started to feel uneasy.”
“From the Cow to the Typewriter”, page 8—Alessio Leonardi

ChrisL

“Watching me work is like watching a refrigerator make ice.”
- M Carter

hhp

There is an archived thread on here where Erik Spiekermann talked about the sheep shagging/stealing quote but I can’t find it. If I remember correctly, he said Adobe was behind changing ‘shag’ to ‘steal.’ There is this though.. http://www.spiekermann.com/iblog/C1109747452/ (search for the word shag)

“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” – Jan Tschicold; The New Typography; 1928
“All the old fellows stole our best ideas.” – Frederic Goudy; date unrecorded
“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.” – Eric Gill; Autobiography; 1940
“I fought linotype and montype for some time because it would not justify as well as handset could be made to do; but at last, as always happens, the machine outdid the hand, and got all the best types on it.” – George Bernard Shaw; Letter to Ruari McLean, 28/3/1949
Tim

Losing Sleep
by Ephram Edward Benguiat

The following passages are taken from an undated typewritten manuscript. It’s very likely these were used as notes for one of Ed’s speaking engagements. There is no known date of publication.

“To me designing has never been a job or profession. It’s a way of life, like a priest or rabbi.”

“Doing something a long time does not mean you’re good. It only means you’ve done it a long time.”

“Doing something and getting paid for it doesn’t mean you’re doing it well. It only means you’re doing it.”

“I don’t think that success is the premise to what is good or bad.”

“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.”

——————————————————-
Yes, I’m old, but I’m back in style!

Hey Folks: No k in Frederic Goudy. Sheep stealers!

Jim

Some of my faves:

“People who love ideas must have a love of words. They will take a vivid interest in the clothes that words wear.” - Beatrice Warde

“Perfect typography is certainly the most elusive of all arts. Sculpture in stone alone comes near it in obstinacy.” Jan Tschichold, Homage to the Book, 1968

“Each letter should have a flirtation with the one next to it.” Mac Baumwell

“Writing is not a series of strokes, but space, divided into characteristic shapes by strokes.” Gerrit Noordzij

“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

I found another version of Beatrice Warde’s quote and think this one is better:

“People who love ideas must have a love of words, and that means, given a chance, they take a vivid interest in the clothes which words wear.”

And two more:

“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 enobling factor of man’s destiny. Thus the printed word is in touch with the spirit.” - Raul Mario Rosarivo, 1951.

“Any work of art that makes us feel the artist tried too hard lacks clarity.”
Clayton Whitehill, The Moods of Type, 1947

Some additional info on Erik Spiekermann’s paraphrase of Goudy’s quote —

Source:
Stop Stealing Sheep
& find out how type works
Erik Spiekermann & E.M. Ginger
First printing: December 1992
Copyright © 1993 Adobe Systems

On the first page of text, Erik added a sidebar to explain his use of Goudy’s quote:

In 1936, Frederic Goudy was in New York City to receive an award for excellence in type design. Upon accepting a certificate, he took one look at it and declared that “Anyone who would letterspace black letter would steal sheep.”

Eric goes on to mention:

You might have noticed that our book cover reads “lower case,” while here it reads “black letter” — two very different things.

He then added a small sample of CAPITALS, lower case and black letter (printed in black letter) to illustrate the difference to the uninformed reader.

Eric continues:

We’re not sure how “black letter” got changed to “lower case,” but we’ve always known it to be the latter; whichever way, it makes infinite sense.

——————————————————-
Yes, I’m old, but I don’t shag sheep!

’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.
From Dwiggins fictional argument over the modern age of steel and speed.
William Addison Dwiggins

Googled with “letterspace sheep Goudy”:

http://www.eyewire.com/magazine/columns/robin/blackletter/

Blackletter it appears to be. Confirmed by Wikipedia (?):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Goudy

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

In a way, The Beatles are the Helvetica of pop; just like Helvetica is The Beatles of typefaces . Experimental Jetset

If you have no intuitive sense of design, then call yourself an “information architect” and only use Helvetica . David Carson

Anyone who uses Helvetica knows nothing about typefaces . Wolfgang Weingart

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 . Stefan Sagmeister

I have never designed a logotype without first trying it in Helvetica. It is still the most versatile, classic and readable of all typefaces. Steff Geissbuhler

Any good typeface can be completely destroyed when misused or extensively overused. Helvetica seemed to sustain a beating like no other. Still fresh, still popular Helvetica is king . Alexander Gelman

There was once a typeface that had the reputation of being more legible and functional than all the others. It was used everywhere and for everything, from signs to logos. Then one day readers couldn’t stand seeing it anymore and decided to stop reading it – despite its superior legibilty. Bit by bit designers forgot about it and it was only used by lay people. Then it was rediscovered for a while and in fashion again. Even books were published about it . Ruedi Baur

Helvetica is the typeface for a deserted island . Friedrich Friedl

We hate to like Helvetica . Hamish Muir

I remember a time at Yale when my work was being critiqued by Paul Rand. Mr. Rand told me only to use Helvetica as a display face never in text, then he squinted, leaned in, and whispered in my ear, “because Helvetica looks like dogshit in text” . Kyle Cooper

(all from the flyer to the book «Helvetica - Homage to a Typeface», edited by lars müller)
12 x 16 cm, 256 pages, 800 illustrations, hardcover.
—- more infos on www.lars-mueller-publishers —

Hey, what’s going on!? Why hasn’t anyone quoted me yet?

“I’m also interested in calligraphy and occasional book-burning.” - Sergej Malinovski

(careful what you wish for... : ) )

“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.” - Mike Parker, Bitstream

“Set a page in Fournier against another in Caslon and another in Plantin and it is as if you heard three different people delivering the same discourse — each with impeccable pronunciation and clarity, yet each through the medium of a different personality.”
- Beatrice Warde, 1933

“Discipline in typography is a prime virtue. Individuality must be secured by means that are rational. Distinction needs to be won by simplicity and restraint. It is equally true that these qualities need to be infused wiht a certain spirit and vitality, or they degenerate into dullness and mediocrity.” - Stanley Morison

“If you like what you do, and you’re lucky enough to be good at it, do it for that reason.”

Phil Grimshaw

“Bring back the old Typophile”
— Sergej

ChrisL

I found this in David Jury’s About Face: Reviving the rules of Typography, 2004. It’s an anonymous quote and not really about typefaces per se, but I thought you’d enjoy it nonetheless:

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a quay and type a word
And weight four it too say
Weather eye yam wrong or write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soo as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the era rite
Its rare lee ever wrong.
Eye have rune this poem threw it
I am shore yore pleased two no
its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me so.

“…a work of art, i.e. a thing made by a man who, however laughable it may seem to men of business, loves God and does what he likes, who serves his fellow men because he is wrapped up in serving God — to whom the service of God is so commonplace that it is as much bad form to mention it as among men of business it is bad form to mention profits.”

“I think it is generally agreed that picture writing was the beginning of our lettering. You might wish to communicate something to someone at a distance. If you have no letters or none common both to you & your correspondent, what else can you do but draw a picture? — the language of pictures is common to all. After a time your pictures are used to signify words and not simply things, and as the system develops and communications become more precise, the pictures become simpler and simpler, more & more conventional, and they come to signify single sounds rather than whole words. And the pictures, by now, have ceased to be pictures. They are, by now, hardly recognizable as representations of things: they are conventional signs, & their pictorial origin is forgotten.”

–Eric Gill, An Essay on Typography, 1936

“A typeface is an alpahbet in a straightjacket”
- Alan Fletcher

I think this is from “Letters of Credit” by Walter Tracy, but I can’t put my hand on it at the moment:

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

I think Matthew Carter said that (Logo, Font & Lettering Bible)

William, do you have a copy of Walter Tracy’s “Letters of Credit”?
If not, I can check the quote this evening at home.

—————————————————————————
Yes, I’m old, but I’m back in style!

Norbert, I have it, but I seem to have misplaced it (arrrrghh! as Charlie Brown used to say).

My copy of Leslie Cabarga’s ’Bible’ is to hand. On p. 200 the quote from Matthew Carter is

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

So Carter felt he was quoting someone else. Maybe Tracy?

“You can do a good ad without good typography, but you can’t do a great ad without good typography.”
Herb Lubalin

Source:
Herb Lubalin obituary, Baseline issue four, TSI Typographic Systems International Limited, 1981

You have pre-#10 issues of Baseline?!

hhp

This one was £2 at the Bristol Book Barn. It has only 20 pages but every article is very readable today. Excellent short pieces on New Johnston, Renault, Usherwood’s Caxton, Baskerville and Adrian Frutiger. (I give out that Book Barn link reluctantly. On the road to Bath, it is a kind of purgatory for books: a cold, depressing place with free instant coffee. But you have to check it every now and then.)

type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters = Tracy

“From an early age he loved letters in the literal rather than literary sense.”
Timothy Rogers, writing of Will Carter

“It is a rarer gift to lay words out properly than to write them”
Nicholas Barker, writing of Will Carter

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

There is a distinct advantage in being a practising 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.

Les Usherwood
Article on release of TSI Caxton (pages 6 — 9)
Baseline, International Typographics Magazine, Issue four

Oddly enough, I also have a copy of Baseline issue four. Somehow it managed to survive in my old files.

——————————————————————
Yes, I’m old, but I found my Baseline!

Hello
My name is German Bold Italic
I am a type face
Which you have never heard before
Which you have never seen before
I can compliment you well
Especially in red
Extremely in green
Maybe in blue blue blue

You will like my sense of style
You will like my sense of style

I fit like a glove - ooh!

Gut ja!
Gut ja!

-Kylie Minogue (said it sung it)

Kylie? I thought it was Towa Tei.

>As a result, their designs tend to look too much like each other.

That’s a bit bizarre, coming from Les. He would go on to reuse the same skeleton a lot, doing different serif treatments, etc. After all, that’s a productive, profitable way to work.

But he was right in a sense, in that if his AD clients liked the way Flange set, they would also like a version of it with more substantial serifs, or more contrast.

Kylie sang it. towa tei wrote it.

Kylie sang it so she said it. Towa Tei wrote it

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4654077.stm

a quote from a polititian but worth a look it’s got ligatures and long s’s ....

Will Burtin, in the Foreword to Ben Rosen’s 1963 Type and Typography: The Designer’s Type Book, says “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.”

“La gracia en tipografía surge espontáneamente cuando el tipógrafo pone un poco de amor en su trabajo. Quien no ame su trabajo no puede esperar que le guste a los demás.”

— Jan Tschichold

“¿Piensas en letras o las letras te hacen pensar?”

— odafonts

Ok, I’m sure this issue is tired, i just remembered where i found the ’shagging sheep’ comment.

http://www.spiekermann.com/iblog/C1109747452/index.html

This is where I got my info. Go fig.

Bonus Question.
Were you really told to “stop stealing sheep,” or is that a watered down version of what was said for letter-spacing all caps?
frederick goudy said that “men who would letterspace lower case would shag sheep’, as that was (and is) considered a cardinal sin by typographers. Letterspacing caps, however, is done and should be done generously.

Strange that this should appear beneath a suggestion to track out copy set in less than 12pt.
Tim

In Erik’s book Stop Stealing Sheep & find out how type works,
he admits to not knowing Goudy’s exact wording, but that “it makes infinite sense” regardless of wording.

So let’s not take Erik’s versions as historically accurate, just rhetorical.

When Mr. Goudy made his statement, he obvioulsy knew it was a faux pas since apologized profusely by saying he says that about everything!

IMHO, the “blackletter” and “steal sheep” version seemed more likely since he was being presented an award (certificate with blackletter?) at a public forum.

Also, IMHO, “shag sheep” seems to be more of Welsh origin, and Goudy was American born and bred, so if he did ever used the term “shag,” he more than likely got it from his father who probably told young Frederic to stop shagging sheep ;)

In 1998 our class was visiting Jonathan Hoefler's studio. I can’t say this is a quote, more of a paraphrase, but it made the right impact at the time! (I’ll try not to mess it up...)

Student’s Question: “What do you think of experimental typography?”

Jonathan’s answer: “People think they can open Helvetica and just f*** with the points and call it experimental. That’s not experimental.”

At Typecon, Mario Feliciano said to me this lovely variation on Walter Tracy’s quote:

“You want beautiful words, not beautiful letters.”

Aha! I knew I had one somewhere... only snag is that it’s not actually from a type designer.

“Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality, but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and integration.”

Neil Postman, in ’Amusing Ourselves To Death’ 1985, as quoted in the introduction to Lewis Blackwell’s ’20th century type (remix)’

Tiffany, where is this going? is it still relevant to add things here? do the quotes have to be from practicing type designers? is the ’why’ out yet? are you getting what you’re looking for?

A bit away from this topic (I‘m not font designer), but I found my own quote in my designmagazin published online for about 6 years funny.
I must have been drunk as I that wrote:

http://www.kahlkopf.com/files/typographie.gif

Translated from german:

Typografie is the true kickass, believe me. It makes you crazy and compliant again and again. It plays “cat and mouse” game with you.
It, the science for itself, inspires you with its ability to transplantation and transfusion the thoughts. It never leaves you in the pass...

Since there are several traditional ways to create emphasis with blackletter, including letterspacing, second color, substitution of a roman font, and, given the date of the award, 1936, my understanding is that Goudy’s comment had to do with the growing anti-German sentiments of the time period.

Gerald

A further note regarding the possibility that Goudy’s now infamous quote was at the time a slur on Germany made as a point for engaging his audience; this culled from The Book Collector’s Packet of 1939. A boycott on “Nazi-made types” was undertaken in the U.S. by the Graphic Arts Forum, “a group of democratically minded graphic arts and advertising people.” The banned typefaces included Bauer Bodoni, Bernhard Modern, Eve, Futura, Kabel, Neuland, Trafton, and Weiss.

Gerald

All typefaces are historical.
Jonathan Hoefler

Quoting Leslie Cabarga from his Logo Font and Lettering Bible

”...Matthew Carter’s Big Caslon is so scrumptious, I want to lick it. ”

pg. 201

and from another Cabarga book, i think this one by Sumner Stone should become a classic:

“My ways are many. All mysterious. I have said too much already.”
(Learn FontLab Fast, p. 9)

“Men who would letterspace blackletter would shag sheep” - Frederick Goudy

That is the correct quote. E. Ginger did the research for “Stop Stealing Sheep”, and she actually spoke to an old lady who had been to the event and heard Goudy say the “s” word. Patrick Ames, then publisher for Adobe Press, loved the quote, suggested it as the title for the book and changed it, for obvious reasons. The book was intended for typographic novices, and those were obviously not deemed grown-up enough for real four letter words. I always thought the titel way too obscure, but I do have a collection of model and toy sheep (too small to shag), because lots of friends think it very funny to give me sheep as presents.

My favourite quote (for obvious reasons) is by Robin Kinross, in Baseline (I have it somewhere, but cannot be bothered to look for it – too many book shelves):

“Meta is the Helvetica of the 90s.”

Robin Kinross, in Baseline

Oops, I meant Blueprint. Perhaps I shouldn’t quote from memory at 2am.

I updated the wiki to attribute the quote... http://typophile.com/wiki/FF%20Meta

You can click the ’edit’ text if you want to fix errors in your posts - a useful feature.

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.

—Adrian Frutiger

as much as i love type, i’ve got to disagree with this guy:

“It is a rarer gift to lay words out properly than to write them”
Nicholas Barker, writing of Will Carter

I needed this for TypeCon this past July. However, keep them coming as I think others might find this a fun resource in the future.

Glad to see people are still posting.

Of all the achievements of the human mind, the birth of an elephant is the most momentous.
— Frederic Goudy

{what I read when I first saw the quote.}

That’s an eary quote David, you must have truncated one of the words :-)

ChrisL

Down with Univers! Long live Gill Sans!
— Leo Maggs
in Types Best Remembered/Best Forgotten , ISBN 1884606008

“By the year 2000 every secretary will have a favorite typeface.”
(or was it font?)”
— Roger Black (possibly at Type90 in Oxford, England)

“Typography? Aaah, lots of fun—no money!”
— unknown passanger on a train from Gatwick Airport to London, England, after asking me what I do for a living. I was on my way to Type90 A.Typ.I conference in Oxford.

David, spooky: although I think I’d never seen that exact quote before, I actually read alphabet for elephant! Only your qualification made me go back and see elephant. I guess being very familiar with Goudy’s strong* affection for the Latin alphabet, the power of suggestion skewed the bouma to an extent I don’t think I’ve ever experienced before. Wow.

* To me, overly so.

hhp

Somewhere around now my brain explodes, leaving a real mess on the dining room table where I do most of the work on my laptop.
Thomas Phinney

I mean, ωhat the fυck?
John Hudson

“The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.” — Warren Chappell

This one has always stuck with me:

“To be married to a wife who can set type is happiness indeed.”
~ Walter Tracy, Letters of Credit

I think this would be a great quote for the typographer matchmaking service I plan on starting :)

And I’m grateful that Will Burtin imported Helvetica to North America in 1958, just a year after Max Miedinger developed it in Zurich. What a super font. Where would we be without it?

And I’m grateful that Will Burtin imported Helvetica to North America in 1958, just a year after Max Miedinger developed it in Zurich. What a super font. Where would we be without it?

“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.” - F. Goudy

Originally I thought this was quotes from famous Type Designers, and I’m not sure this is a famous quote, but I kind of like it. I couldn’t bring myself to actually insert one for effect though.

Font is Cheapskate by Pat Broderick. Quote is by Susanna Sturgis

I saw one of Gill’s grumpy quotes in here, and figured that I’d add another from An Essay On Typography.

[Writing] is in fact an entirely outworn, decayed and corrupt convention whose chief & most conspicuous character is its monumental witness to the conservatism, laziness and irrationality of men and women.

I’m counting down the days until I turn into a didact!

One of my favorite news items of the new millennium:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/3103421.stm

hhp

Nice link hrant, I bet that would have made Gill all sorts of happy!

In anticipation of TypeCon2006:

“Typomania is curable but not fatal. Unfortunately.”
— Erik Spiekermann, TypeCon2005

“Slikify it”
— Erik Spiekermann, TypeCon2005, in reference to the redigitizing of the FF Bau font

“We’re very concerned with language and how language works. We’re trying to engage people rather than dictate how they should be thinking.”
— Neville Brody, TypeCon2005

“Its focus wasn’t on the written word but how the word was written”.
— Neville Brody, TypeCon2005, in reference to Fuse Magazine

“The Ardent Hymn that Unites Peoples”
— Pablo Neruda, Ode to Typography

not a designer, but quite typelover to put on.

“One of the many unforseen consequences of typography, the rise of nationalism is maybe the best known”
Marshall McLuhan

(but I can’t find the source. I could be misquoting slightly)

“Of the many unforeseen consequences of typography, the emergence of nationalism is, perhaps, the most familiar.”

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Marshall McLuhan, what font did he design again?

Cheers, Si

Wasn’t it WTC Our Bodoni or something?

hhp

Si,
Don’t you remember? It only came in a medium weight, I think itwas called Message :-)

ChrisL

Chris, you know I threw you that pitch so you could hit a home run. Well done! I think it was actually “Massage Medium” - but that’s always been disputed.

I would rather get a massage than a message any day :-)
But I will take that lying down.

ChrisL

Andi Emery said:
“Typomania is curable but not fatal. Unfortunately.”
— Erik Spiekermann, TypeCon2005

The Helvetica movie features a variation of that by Erik himself:
“I’m obviously a typomaniac—which is an incurable if not mortal disease.”
Aggravation?

THIS IS
A PRINTING OFFICE

CROSSROADS OF CIVILISATION
REFUGE OF ALL THE ARTS
AGAINST THE RAVAGES OF TIME
ARMOURY OF FEARLESS TRUTH
AGAINST WHISPERING RUMOUR
INCESSANT TRUMPET OF TRADE

FROM THIS PLACE WORDS MAY FLY ABROAD
NOT TO PERISH ON WAVES OF SOUND
NOT TO VARY WITH THE WRITER’S HAND
BUT FIXED IN TIME HAVING BEEN VERIFIED IN PROOF
FRIEND YOU STAND ON SACRED GROUND
THIS IS A PRINTING OFFICE

Beatrice Warde (1932)

http://www.nenne.com/typography/bw3.html

I’ve always heard that quote as:
“The bad news is you are a ______-phile; the good news is it’s incurable.”

Fill in the hobby of your choice. Used as an opening line for bad speech makers... Normally the rest of the speech goes downhill from that point — along with the bad chicken dinner that goes with it.

I can’t seem to locate the quote: “Typography is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters” in any of Tracy’s writings, can someone please help me with a title and a page number?

Googling, I see it in several places attributed to “Steve Byers”, but I don’t know who that is. I looked in Tracy and then gave up. I can’t remember where I first read or heard it. Good luck, I’d like to know the source also.

I did the same, and went for a look at the Steve Byers article, in ‘The Art of Looking Sideways’ by Allan Fletcher.

The article itself is mostly a list of quotes on typography. The title of the article is ‘Typography is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters’ (with quotation marks), but with no reference to the origin of this specific quotation…

Steve Byers was one of the type development/marketing managers at Linotype, I think out of Hauppauge, NY during the mid-to-late eighties.

“This font didn’t take much to make. About 30 hours altogether.” —Fred Nader, speaking of ’Miltown’, a font made from the Matrix movie title.

Thirty hours for a quick display font? Makes me wonder what kind of spread it took to make different kinds of fonts and font sets.

Steve Byers was a classmate of mine at Carnegie Mellon in the mid 60s. He majored in Graphic Arts Management. He went on to a bright career as Norbert mentioned.

ChrisL

Doing a little digging I see that Steve Byers was on the board of the Type Directors Club fairly recently. You might contact him through them, and find out where he got the quote.

He probably got the quote from me during a drunken stupor at ATypI in the eighties ;^)

well, I didn’t see this one yet:
“Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to”. Eric Gill

and another Gill (Dr. John):
“It is freely admitted that this “testing” is far from ideal and could even be described as anecdotal.”

“In the fields of Printing & Graphic Design, it is generally agreed that the poet in our midst is the type designer.”
— Noel Martin

Wynne Hunkler
Principal | Wynnefields Creative
Web Design & Visual Communications

Talbot Baines Reed, author of “A History of the Old English Letter Foundries,” wrote:

“Egotism has been and remains responsible for many defects of modern typography.”

Originally in “Ars Typographica,” winter 1920. Reprinted, with the title “Old and New Fashions in Typography,” in Heller & Meggs “Texts on Type.”

So, maybe he wasn’t a type designer. Still . . . . .

powers