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.

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.

There are bad types and good types, and the whole science and art of typography begins after the first category has been set aside.

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

People who love ideas must have a love of words. They will take a vivid interest in the clothes that words wear.

There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline. When you realise that ugly typography never effaces itself, you will be able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at something else.

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.