Tschichold's Quotes

#1. Penguin Classic, with the orange bands at the top and bottom; and the Gill Sans thirty-sixpoint title, all caps, centered and medium weight, in black on the white band in the middle. One of the designer Tschichold's prouder moments, when he finally woke the hell up and joined the twentieth century.

Chip Kidd

#2. Of course I litter the public highway. Every chance I get. After all, it's not the beer cans that are ugly; it's the highway that is ugly.

Edward Abbey

#3. In the beginning of their end, people created their gods and their after-lives.

Ryan Miller

#4. I've learned ... That when you harbor bitterness, happiness will dock elsewhere.

Andy Rooney

#5. When you actively engage in gradually refining yourself, you retreat from your lazy ways of covering yourself or making excuses. Instead of feeling a persistent current of low-level shame, you move forward by using the creative possibilities of this moment, your current situation.

Epictetus

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

Jan Tschichold

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

Jan Tschichold

#8. 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

#9. Don't ruin the moment by saying something stupid. There's elegance in things left unsaid.

Kurtis J. Wiebe

#10. 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

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

Jan Tschichold

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

Jan Tschichold

#13. It is important for young entrepreneurs to be adequately self-aware to know what they do not know.

Mark Zuckerberg

#14. We thought the Duke would have been pleased if the King's Majesty would have married his daughter, but nothing came of that
'
Squints, and has freckles,' said Caspian.
Oh, poor girl,' said Lucy.

C.S. Lewis

#15. People really feel like music is free, but will pay $6 for water. You can drink water free out of the tap and it's good water. But they're okay paying for it. It's just the mindset right now.

Jay-Z

#16. 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

#17. I'm not a number. Dammit, I'm a man.

Bob Seger

#18. 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

#19. That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

Samuel Johnson

#20. 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

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

Jan Tschichold

#22. I require a hierarchy of priorities after protecting Shira and Malkah and the small felines.

Marge Piercy

#23. 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

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

Jan Tschichold

#25. The limit of man s knowledge in any subject possesses a high interest which is perhaps increased by its close neighbourhood to the realms of imagination.

Charles Darwin

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

Jan Tschichold

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

Jan Tschichold