Jan Tschichold Quotes

#1. I was the youngest in my family. When the other kids went to school, my mother would make them breakfast and then she would go back to bed for an hour, so I was sort of babysat by television.

Paula Poundstone

#2. My errors were more fertile than I ever imagined.

Jan Tschichold

#3. She sank down in the chair again, gingerly, as if it would splinter. It might. Hades had made it himself, discovering in the process that he was a better Lord of Souls than he was Lord of Furniture.

Larissa Ione

#4. Readers want what is important to be clearly laid out; they will not read what is too troublesome.

Jan Tschichold

#5. The book designer strives for perfection; yet every perfect thing lives somewhere in the neighborhood of dullness and is frequently mistaken for it by the insensitive.

Jan Tschichold

#6. In themselves, experiments are not art. Infinite amounts of energy are wasted because everybody feels he has to make his own start, his own beginning, instead of getting to know what has already been done. It is doubtful that anyone who doesn't want to ...

Jan Tschichold

#7. White space is to be regarded as an active element, not a passive background.

Jan Tschichold

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

Jan Tschichold

#9. If a man doesn't know how to dance he doesn't know how to make love, there I said it!

Craig Ferguson

#10. The sanserif only seems to be the simpler script. It is a form that was violently reduced for little children. For adults it is more difficult to read than serifed roman type, whose serifs were never meant to be ornamental.

Jan Tschichold

#11. The notion that a woman's sexuality belongs only to the husband is a central tenet tied to the idea that a woman is the property of the father first, then the property of the husband.

Darrel Ray

#12. Perfect typography is more a science than an art.

Jan Tschichold

#13. 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 Tschichold

#14. 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

#15. The works of 'abstract' art are subtle creations of order out of simple contrasting elements.

Jan Tschichold

#16. Akkarin: I watched the first woman I loved die. I dont think I can survive losing the second.
Sonea: I love you too.

Trudi Canavan

#17. Dancers today can do anything; the technique is phenomenal. The passion and the meaning to their movement can be another thing.

Martha Graham

#18. We cannot alter the essential shape of a single letter without at the same time destroying the familiar printed face of our language, and thereby rendering it useless.

Jan Tschichold

#19. Water is more precious than oil. Both are more precious than music. Music won't heat a house or help a plant to grow.

Pete Townshend

#20. The aim of every typographic work - the delivery of a message in the shortest, most efficient manner.

Jan Tschichold

#21. Perfect typography is certainly the most elusive of all arts. Sculpture in stone alone comes near it in obstinacy.

Jan Tschichold