Quote

I don't think that type should be expressive at all. I can write the word 'dog' with any typeface and it doesn't have to look like a dog. But there are people that [think that] when they write 'dog' it should bark.

Massimo Vignelli

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Massimo Vignelli
Age: 83 †
Born: 1931
Born: January 10
Died: 2014
Died: May 27
Architect
Designer
Furniture Designer
Graphic Designer
Interior Designer
University Teacher
Milano
Italia
Look
Typefaces
Looks
Expressive
Writing
Bark
Think
Dog
Thinking
Type
Like
Word
People
Write
Doesn
Typeface

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Intellectual elegance [is] a mind that is continually refining itself with education and knowledge. Intellectual elegance is the opposite of intellectual vulgarity.
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A designer without a sense of history is worth nothing
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I'm not a designer, I'm a sifter. I can sift everything, all the time. My sift level lines keep shaking all the time for everything that is around.
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The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design.
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The pencil you leave it there, and it's dead. It doesn't do anything and it doesn't move by itself. It doesn't offer anything it's totally submissive to you.
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If you do the best thing everyday of your life, but nothing shakes you nor shakes the table for you and others, it is stale and its not worth it.
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There are people that thinks that type should be expressive. They have a different point of view from mine.
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Graphic Design is the communication of information in an appropriate visual manner.
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Scale is extremely important. Scale is not dimensions. Dimensions are physical and scales are mental.
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So what is design all about? It [exists to] decrease the amount of vulgarity in the world ... to make the world a better place to be. It doesn’t have to be one style. We’re not talking about style, we’re talking about quality. Style is tangible, quality is intangible. I am talking about giving to everything that surrounds us a level of quality.
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It is better to starve than get a bad client.
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You can reach timelessness if you look for the essence of things and not the appearance. The appearance is transitory — the appearance is fashion, the appearance is trendiness — but the essence is timeless.
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I see graphic design as the organization of information that is semantically correct, syntactically consistent and pragmatically understandable.
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The only way to stay in fashion is never be in. If you are never in fashion, you are never out of fashion.
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Good design is ubiquitous and forever.
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If you do it right, it will last forever.
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Design without discipline is anarchy, an exercise of irresponsibilit y.
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Scale is a mental - you can say that a lounger has scale, a building has scale, or an object has scale, or a page, or whatever if it's just right. A scale is a relationship to the object and the space surrounding it. And that dialogue could be music, or it could be just noise. And that is why it is so important, the sense of scale.
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