"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.

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

@Jim: Frederic Goudy was almost as prolific a creator of bon mots as of typefaces. My personal favorite is:

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

heehee

I am surprised that a direct recollection confirms the saltier version of the Frederic W. Goudy quote on letterspacing blackletter (or lower-case). After all, he is an American type designer, not a British one, and the quote dates from a time prior to the release of the Austin Powers movies.

Reading the posts here led me to search out this page:

http://berlinbooks.org/brb/2009/11/typocalyse-now-the-legacy-of-jan-tsch...

When I was a child, I naïvely thought that serifs were an unnecessary and old-fashioned complication to the forms of letters. Thus, Jan Tschihold's youthful folly is entirely understandable. I propose that it was shared, in a different form, more widely than may have been recognized.

When printing began, printed books imitated manuscripts. Since the letters were formed at one point, when the matrices were made, why not use the form of letter that is esteemed as the best one - the one that is the most elaborate, that requires the most effort to make?

Despite habit, I suspect that the issues of readability with regard to blackletter were noticed by some even at the very beginning. The rapid emergence of rotunda and bastarda typefaces would seem to confirm this.

Incidentally, because rotunda and bastarda were very readable, I think it regrettable that this line of development did not continue to be followed in the creation of text types. While Lydian is readable, it is still unlikely to be used for text, and, while Optima could be said to be related, it is derived from Roman and sans-serif typefaces, and does not belong to this line of evolution at all.

The fact that Roman types were used for Latin text might be put down to authenticity alone. But the fact that blackletter was suitable for the vernacular - the reader's native language - while Roman was used for texts that are in an ancient language which the reader had learned as a second language seems to me another indication that Roman was regarded as more legible all along.

Also, in the early days of printing, it was difficult enough for printers to cast their own blackletter and roman fonts in a range of sizes. The Roman of Aldus Manutilus closely resembled that of Nicholas Jenson, and the Roman of Claude Garamond was patterned after that of Aldus Manutilus. Printers tended to use one style of roman face and stick to it.

Obviously, if one is only using one roman face, and one is cutting one's own punches, there will be motivation to make the best ones possible, and one's own personality and limitations and handwriting will all be reflected. So there will be change over time. Thus, Caslon, Baskerville, and Bell all emerged from this type of evolution, as well as Bodoni.

Given, then, that the world was emerging from a period when printing shops only had a very limited set of typefaces, it's not surprising that Jenson, Poliphilus, Bembo and Garamond all had to be revived. With only Caslon - and, later, oldstyle faces based on the one by Alexander Phemister - as competition, it's also not surprising that Scotch Roman faces - which attempted to soften the characteristics of Bodoni much as Gill Sans, later, was considered a humanist sans-serif - became the fashion.

In this earlier day, their unbracketed serifs were seen, like the lack of serifs on Helvetica, to be an abandonment of useless, unnecessary ornament. But everything needful for legibility - serifs of some sort, classical proportion - was retained.

I see Times Roman as being like Caslon - a "sweet spot" that will stay popular for a long time. When in doubt, set it in Times... is, in effect, already the maxim that the same thing, said about Caslon, once was. In the area of sans-serif, Stone and Lucida seem to be today's fashion.

When Caslon fell, the earlier oldstyle types not being available, it led to the Scotch Roman epoch which looks so dismal to today's eyes.

When Times Roman falls, though, technical factors will not pressure us to use overly condensed letters. Nor will the designs of Baskerville or Bembo be hidden and unavailable. So there is no reason for the fashions of the future to give us a long, depressing era dominated by typefaces which, to their posterity (as well as our eyes, if we could see them) look awful and thus make their popularity inexplicable.

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.
—J.H. Mason

.

"Perfect typography is more a science than an art."

Tschichold, J. (1962). Consistent correlation between book page and type area (as cited by Tschichold, J. 1975/1991). The form of the book. Hartley & Marks Publishers Inc. Washington, United States.

"Printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and maudlin experiments."

Warde, B. (1955). The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography.

(There are multiple references, I am not sure which is most accurate)

The Goudy letter spacing quote? I believe the truth is the old man said that line so many times, that it is pointless to argue a definitive version exists. Just credit a source, that'll give your citation value.

But certainly, there's no k at the end of Frederic.

Typography is the most influential of all the arts:
it sends knowledge abroad as heaven sends the rain.
One fructifies the soul; the other man’s intelligence.

1923 ATF SPECIMEN BOOK

Plenty of white space and generous line spacing,
and don’t make the type size too miserly.
Then you will be assured of a product fit for a king.

GIAMBATTISTA BODONI

A good typographer does what he should do,
not what he wants to do.

MICHAEL RUSSEM / MICHAEL BIXLER

Often said & written by friend Michael Russem, but just as often cited by our mentor Michael Bixler

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


MATTHEW CARTER

Standardization, instead of individualization.
Cheap books, instead of private press editions.
Active literature, instead of passive leather bindings.

JAN TSCHICHOLD

By a typographer, I do not mean a printer,
as he is vulgarly accounted. By a typographer,
I mean such as one, who by his own judgement,
from solid reasoning within himself,
can either perform, or direct others to perform
from the beginning to the end,
all the handy-works & physical operations
relating to typographie.

JOSEPH MOXON

Originally published in U&lc.

"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." —Ed. Benguiat

James,

Once in a while you get something like the Bach B minor Mass or Beethoven's 9th and they stick around for a few hundred years. Of course, many of us would be happy if one of our faces lasted as long as "Cant Get No Satisfaction" ;-)

Chris,

Most will likely end up as "Incense and Peppermints"

More likely, the B side of a cover version of "Someone Left the Cake Out in the Rain" :-)

Surely you mean "MacArthur Park".

Damn, I knew there was something wrong with that title!

“The advent of the computer generated the
phenomena called desktop publishing. This
enabled anyone who could type the freedom of
using any available typeface and do any kind of
distortion. It was a disaster of mega proportions.
A cultural pollution of incomparable dimension.
As I said, at the time, if all people doing desktop
publishing were doctors we would all be dead!”

— Massimo Vignelli

I think that the designers of menswear had a similar feeling towards Massimo's menswear collection as Massimo has towards desktop publishing.

I would dismiss anything Massimo says regarding type or typography. Additionally, he is not and has never been a type designer, so his quote does not belong in this thread.

You're right. He isn't a type designer. I didn't read the title all that closely.

I don't agree with some of his opinions. I am particularly referring to his statement that there aren't more than a handful of good fonts. I wouldn't dismiss anything he has to say about type or typography though.

I like this quote and I think he makes a good point. It has become much easier to make a typeface due to the computer and the result is a lot of bad typefaces. It is clever the way he compares desktop publishing to the medical industry.

Just another one of the "old guys" complaining about the computer.

The computer may have made it a bit easier to make a typeface, and there are no doubt many really crappy typefaces out there, but it has also give the graphic design industry the largest collection of great typefaces in history.

As I said, at the time, if all people doing desktop publishing were doctors we would all be dead

More crap from Massimo. Following his analogy; If some were doctors, yes some might be dead, but the others would have saved an awful lot of lives.

Very good point that by making it easier to produce a typeface the computer also made it possible to produce more good typefaces. I like your optimistic view on the the subject.

Massimo sounds like he was just lamenting the loss of revenue to others. In his era (and mine) designers made most of their money on fairly mundane work that was simple to design and could easily be turned over to lesser-paid staff. We used to call this grunt work. This freed up the top-dogs to spend more time on show pieces yet still collect on the grunt work done by their staff. It was a steady moneymaker with plenty of repeat business--as in "update this monthly catalog with new prices". Yes, the computer turned this into a database publishing issue with automated regional versioning and distribution. Yes, there also was a huge birth of hack designers now in the workforce who knew noting about design but plenty about software usage. So goes the world. We have always had competition to deal with. Some of it was only in price and not in quality. If a client didn't give a damn about good design, he hired a hack and saved a few bucks. That is the way the world works, Massimo. Get over it already--it is 2011 now, not 1965. The NYC grip also faded with the internet. You did not have to be a 5 minute cab ride to all the big clients to get their work any more. Sure, now you can get both crap design and good design from Manhattan to Malaysia. Welcome to the global economy, we are all better off for it except a very few of the elite and late adopters perhaps.

If beauty of music is between the notes, beauty of typography is in the white spaces: counters, letter space, word space and leading !!

Bill, I think you have successfully pinned your quote to Walter Tracy thanks to the wonders of the internet. :^p Did you ever find a positive attribution of this quote to him? I could not find it in a search of Letters of Credit on google books.

Paul, I couldn't find it flipping through Letters of Credit either, which was the reason I was hesitant in my original post in this thread. I still don't know. Just checking, I do see that Tina Parker, above, is right about it being in Font, Logo, and Lettering Bible by Leslie Cabarga. And there it quotes Matthew Carter (p. 200): "As the saying goes, type is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters." Evidently Carter thinks he got it from somewhere else. I believe that in a Typophile thread, David Berlow confirmed that it was originally Walter Tracy, but with no reference.

It could be that I heard it aurally from Matthew Carter at TypeCon, with a reference to Tracy, but I can't remember. So to solve the mystery you might ask Matthew Carter.

I thought it was MC too, until I dug up this thread. But your wording of the same sentiment from this thread can be found in several places on the net with attribution to Walter Tracy, but never with any reference. :^/

As I said, Carter, as quoted in Cabarga, indicates that it's not original with him, and he was just quoting it. So it's not solved. Berlow seemed to be sure it was Tracy. It would be nice to nail down the source, because it's something like the first rule of type design.

I have heard that quote many times, including from, Carter. I don't recall him being very positive about the attribution.

"... if all people doing desktop
publishing were doctors we would all be dead!”

— Massimo Vignelli"

And if all doctors had stopped learning and never used any tools developed after 1960, how many of us would now be dead? Me, for sure--thanks to a quadruple bypass operation.

Dezcom: more than a beautiful group of letters! Keep on ticking and drawing:)

WWJMBD?
— Dean, C. T. (2012).

Originally tweeted by @Readthetype:
“To all graphic designers, when in doubt just ask yourself WWJMBD? (What Would Josef Müller-Brockmann Do?) If you don’t know who he is, quit.”

Thanks,Bill!!!

Christopher, regarding Müeller-Brockmann, he would do as he always did, use flush-left Helvetica ;-)

When I specifically asked Matthew about that “beautiful collection of letters” bon mot last year, his response was, “I'm sure I heard it from Mike Parker, but where he heard it I don't know.”

Interesting, Kent. Parker and Tracy were heads of typeface development at Linotype US and UK respectively, at the same time, so it's quite possible that Parker heard it from Tracy. It's still an open question, but we're getting closer to the answer.

It seems to me you just got further. :-)
I guess now ask Mike.

Speaking of which:
http://typophile.com/node/90369#comment-496548

hhp

Hi,
I'm Saadi.
I don't know who said this quote: "Stay true to your form no matter where you are."
When I read it I knew it was perfect to expose the beauty of a font. So I did this experimental video with two of my friends for FUTURA.

Please let me know what you think. Here's the link.
http://www.saadialkouatli.com/futura-typography-experiment/

I just noticed that, astoundingly, one of my favorite quotes is missing from this thread. Another quote from the same person is present, and a quote from a different individual expressing a similar idea is present... but this famous quote is not:

Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favourite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in colour. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.

Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you will find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wine-glass have a parallel in typography.

Beatrice Warde

Actually, looking at her essay, I see why: it doesn't contain a single short quote giving its point, although somewhere else I had seen a quote from her doing so.

Ah, wait: this will do (and, in fact, was what I was looking for but initially missed) -

Type well used is invisible as type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas.

One could also say that her metaphor is out of date. Crystal is glass which calls attention to itself because it has had lead oxide added to it to increase its refractive index, causing it to sparkle. Lead can leach out into the wine, sweetening it. (And, for that matter, one of the virtues of gold is that it is highly resistant to chemical attack, unlike many other metals, so it is not unsuitable to hold wine. Wine is meant to be tasted, not looked at.)

So the ideal wine goblet would perhaps be of something more resistant, such as borosilicate glass.

@Chris Dean:
At least Josef Müller-Brockmann will never fall (or, rather, sadly, had never fallen) into the hubristic mistake once famously made by one of the Beatles.

But I will take note of the opinion that our salvation is to be found in the Swiss grid system.

More like salivation.

hhp

“There is no end to the maze of practices in typography, and this idea of printing as a conveyor is, at least in the minds of all the great typographers with whom I have had the privilege of talking, the one clue that can guide you through the maze. Without this essential humility of mind, I have seen ardent designers go more hopelessly wrong, make more ludicrous mistakes out of an excessive enthusiasm, than I could have thought possible.”

Warde, B. (1955).

————

“Printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and maudlin experiments.”

Warde, B. (1955).