A Quote On Typography

Every once in a while I see a quote on some­thing that nails it. Jon Tan­ger­ine wrote recently on The Para­graph in Web Typog­ra­phy & Design, and he said a quote worth shar­ing and con­tem­plat­ing on. The only thing I did was fix two spelling errors.

“Good typog­ra­phy makes the can­vas fit the mean­ing of the text, not the other way around. It paints pic­tures with form that enrich the mean­ing of the words with colour, tex­ture and move­ment. It is illu­sive, sub­tle, and ambi­ent. It’s the shirt that engages from a dis­tance. The closer you get to it the bet­ter it seems, but it takes a moment of reflec­tion to even real­ize why.”

Bril­liant!

2 Comments

  1. Hi, and thanks for the kind words! I think the “spelling errors” you refer to are British Eng­lish spelling, rather than errors. Thanks for think­ing the prose wor­thy of quot­ing. I appre­ci­ate it.

    Jon Tan on 11.07.08

  2. Jon: Thanks for stop­ping by! Yes, you’re right on the dif­fer­ence of language.

    Chris Poteet on 11.07.08

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