Legibility Quotes

• From all these experiences the most important thing I have learned is that legibility and beauty stand close together and that type design, in its restraint, should be only felt but not perceived by the reader.

  Adrian Frutiger

  Beauty, Reading, Learning

  325 Copy quote

• Never mistake legibility for communication.

  David Carson

  Funny, Mistake, Communication

  67 Copy quote

• Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to.

  Eric Gill

  Practice, Design, Typography

  Eric Gill (2016). “An Essay on Typography”, p.14, Laurus

  59 Copy quote

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• Just because something is legible doesn't mean it communicates...

  David Carson

  Mean, Communicate

  "Helvetica". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 2007.

  71 Copy quote

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• Dont confuse legibility with communication. Just because something is legible doesnt mean it communicates and, more importantly, doesnt mean it communicates the right thing.

  David Carson

  Communication, Mean, Communicate

  198 Copy quote

• Sometimes you sacrifice legibility to increase impact.

  Herb Lubalin

  Sacrifice, Impact, Sometimes

  106 Copy quote

• What's the use of being legible, when nothing inspires you to take notice of it?

  Wolfgang Weingart

  Inspirational, Inspire, Use

  122 Copy quote

• Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to. But this is not to say that because we have got used to something demonstrably less legible than something else would be if we could get used to it, we should make no effort to scrap the existing thing. This was done by the Florentines and Romans of the fifteenth century; it requires simply good sense in the originators & good will in the rest of us.

  Eric Gill

  Practice, Effort, Would Be

  24 Copy quote

• The studies I've seen about readability and legibility tend to focus on a specific set of metrics: size, not just the point size, but things like the size of the lower case letters as a proportion of the overall letter height, and line length. People simply can't read really small type set in really long lines.

  Michael Bierut

  Long, People, Focus

  Source: scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org

  6 Copy quote

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• I believe sans serif typefaces - today upheld as models of neutrality and legibility - were called "Grotesques" in the 19th century because people thought they were hideous. But now we're used to them.

  Michael Bierut

  Believe, People, Neutrality

  Source: scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org

  6 Copy quote

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• Digital ink technology holds substantial promise in terms of legibility, portability, and power consumption, but I am less confident about the communication aspect.

  Tom Peters

  Communication, Technology, Promise

  Source: www.researchgate.net

  4 Copy quote

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• The trace left behind is substituted for the practice. It exhibits the (voracious) property that the geographical system has of being able to transform action into legibility, but in doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten.

  Michel de Certeau

  Practice, World, Able

  Michel de Certeau (2011). “The Practice of Everyday Life”, p.97, Univ of California Press

  9 Copy quote

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• Don't confuse legibility with communication.

  David Carson

  Communication

  "Helvetica". Documentary, www.imdb.com. 2007.

  83 Copy quote

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