Typographic Quotes & Sayings

Are some free fonts a gift to humanity rather than a blight on typographic civilization ? — Ellen Lupton

Typographic style is founded not on any one technology of typesetting or printing, but on the primitive yet subtle craft of writing. — Robert Bringhurst

Only a fraction of the history of literacy has been typographic. — Marshall McLuhan

Typographic man can express but is helpless to read the configurations of print technology. — Marshall McLuhan

Think of Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter or Billy Graham, or even Albert Einstein, and what will come to your mind is an image, a picture of face, (in Einstein's case, a photograph of a face). Of words, nothing will come to mind. This is the difference between thinking in a word-centered culture and thinking in an image-centered culture. — Neil Postman

For me, typography is a triangular relationship between design idea, typographic elements, and printing technique. — Wolfgang Weingart

Readers usually ignore the typographic interface, gliding comfortably along literacy's habitual groove. Sometimes, however, the interface should be allowed to fail. By making itself evident, typography can illuminate the construction and identity of a page, screen, place, or product. — Ellen Lupton

The aim of every typographic work - the delivery of a message in the shortest, most efficient manner. — Jan Tschichold

We are the Western World. We read, see, think. Left. To. Right. We can't help it.
..The problem with Top to Bottom is that it's unAmerican. We want to begin in the depths and climb our way upward. But our typographic system argues against this and wins, and images follow suit.
..What you have to be careful to remember about Big and Small, is that they can extend to infinity in either direction. Consider: Big can always be bigger and Small smaller. The atom is the Universe and vice versa. And they're both identical.
..Left to Right, Top to Bottom, Big and Small; on a two-dimensional plane, all of these tools rely on a relative truth. Now we come to In Front Of and In Back of, which for us are big, fat lies. Very useful though, and the first of many at your disposal. — Chip Kidd

I have little interest in illustration, which lacks a kind of transcendental quality. It is too literal. I find typography more straightforward, conceptual, and appealing, with its strict geometric vocabulary. There is a bridge between typographic design and fine art, especially since typography possesses a complex subtlety. The idea, the method, and the honesty in expression are central to a designer who works with type. — Timothy Samara