Quotes
I am thankful for small mercies. I compared notes with one of my friends who expects everything of the universe, and is disappointed when anything is less than the best, and I found that I begin at the other extreme, expecting nothing, and am always full of thanks for moderate goods.
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
I do think studying historical types is tremendously helpful for type design. (I also subscribe to the idea that designing types is tremendously helpful for researching type history.) With enough study you start to develop a more interior understanding of why letters look the way they do — not just ‘I’ve seen enough fonts to have a sense of how wide an S should be,’ but rather ‘I’ve come to understand that in this genre of design, underlying simple geometry (or an impulse to even out cap widths, or an overriding focus on equalizing counters, or etc.) dictates how wide an S should be.
–Craig Eliason
Skill in the digital age is confused with mastery of digital tools, masking the importance of understanding materials and mastering the elements of form.
–John Maeda
What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics, a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant. A theory appears to be beautiful or elegant (or simple, if you prefer) when it can be expressed concisely in terms of mathematics we already have. Symmetry exhibits the simplicity. The Fundamental Law is such that the different skins of the onion resemble one another and therefore the math for one skin allows you to express beautifully and simply the phenomenon of the next skin.
–Murray Gell-Mann
When form predominates, meaning is blunted.But when content predominates, interest lags. Form & Content. Without aesthetics, you can’t find the truth, to do things with quality. I think this is in a true sense what æsthetics means. Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.
–Paul Rand
