QuoteProject
Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence. Its heartwood is calligraphy - the dance, on a tiny stage, of the living, speaking hand - and its roots reach into living soil, though its branches may be hung each year with new machines. So long as the root lives, typography remains a source of true delight, true knowledge, true surprise.
Robert Bringhurst
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Typography transforms written language into a visually enduring form, reflecting both tradition and innovation.

In this quote, Robert Bringhurst highlights the significance of typography as an artistic craft that bestows written language with visual permanence and vitality. He draws a parallel between typography and calligraphy, emphasizing its roots in human expression and the continuous evolution of its tools and techniques, suggesting that as long as this foundational connection exists, typography will continue to inspire and enlighten.

Themes

TypographyVisual ArtCalligraphyExpressionLanguage

In practice

Example use cases

During a design seminar focused on print media, this quote can be used to illustrate the importance of typography.

More from Robert Bringhurst

If language is lost, humanity is lost. If writing is lost, certain kinds of civilization and society are lost, but many other kinds remain - and there is no reason to think that those alternatives are inferior.
Robert BringhurstRead
Typography exists to honor content.
Robert BringhurstRead
In a world rife with unsolicited messages, typography must often draw attention to itself before it will be read. Yet in order to be read, it must relinquish the attention it has drawn. Typography with anything to say therefore aspires to a kind of statuesque transparency. It's other traditional goal is durability: not immunity to change, but a clear superiority to fashion. Typography at its best is a visual form of language linking timelessness and time.
Robert BringhurstRead
When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written. But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?
Robert BringhurstRead
Poetry, I'm often told, is something made of words. I think it really goes the other way around: words are made of poetry.
Robert BringhurstRead

Similar quotes

What interests me is the opportunity for all of us to become something different from what we are, by constructing spaces that contribute something to the experience of who we are.
Richard SerraRead
The best graphics are about the useful and important, about life and death, about the universe. Beautiful graphics do not traffic with the trivial.
Edward TufteRead
Every building is like a person. Single and unrepeatable.
Louis SullivanRead
So I write melodies - thirty, forty, fifty - then I cast them off until I have just two or three. If only one is needed, I go see the director and ask him to decide.
Michel LegrandRead
I write my books at moments of shock. I meet people in extremis and their stories are highly emotionally charged.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
One of the things that happens in novels it's almost like a continual debate with yourself. That's why you're writing the book. It's why you create characters: so you can argue with yourself.
Michael OndaatjeRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.