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If typography is calling attention to itself, it's taking that attention away from what the words are saying.

Michael Bierut

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Michael Bierut
Age: 54
Designer
Graphic Designer
Cleveland
Ohio
Calling
Taking
Consciousness
Saying
Attention
Words
Away
Typography

More quotes by Michael Bierut

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Designs that have a whiff of complex impenetrability tends to suggest big, complicated ideas. Academic writing tends to work the same way, I understand.
Michael Bierut
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If you look at the Olympic graphics for Mexico or Los Angeles, those programs don't look contemporary by today's eyes but they really look like they are of their place and time.
Michael Bierut
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Target for example, is just a dot with a circle around it, that's all it is, so if you want a logo like Target, you don't need to hire a designer, you barely need to know how to operate a computer program, the logo may as well be anything.
Michael Bierut
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Graphic design is the fiction that anticipates the fact.
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I've never really acquired any facility for working on the computer, though one day I think I would like to. My generation just barely missed it, which I don't think is a good thing or a bad thing.
Michael Bierut
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I think once the artistic world of the type designer merged with the scientific world of the computer programmer, you began to see this crossover.
Michael Bierut
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No one loves authenticity like a graphic designer. And no one is quite as good at simulating it.
Michael Bierut
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I can see how some people get sentimental about how we used to do things in 'the good old days' but in a way I just think they are being nostalgic for the way they were brought up.
Michael Bierut
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I'm not sure about my design work every time.
Michael Bierut
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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
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I'm not an expert in typefaces that serve scientific writing, but I'd guess that's another dozen or two.
Michael Bierut
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BE PURPOSEFUL AND THOUGHTFUL IN THE CHOICES YOU MAKE WHEN THE OPTIONS ARE NEARLY INFINITE.
Michael Bierut
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Every little job counts. Design counts.
Michael Bierut
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I actually don't think that brand new logos are worth that much or mean that much in and of themselves. So why not have a class of third graders compete to design your logo?
Michael Bierut
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The scientists at CERN were actually surprised that people commented on this. Reportedly Fabiola Gianotti, the coordinator of the CERN program to find the Higgs Boson, was asked why she had selected Comic Sans. She simply said, Because I like it.
Michael Bierut
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There was a time when most people had a choice between two kinds of personal communication, handwriting or using a typewriter. Today, people are invited to choose from a list of (surprisingly exotic) typefaces every time they turn on their computer. I think this has made everyone more aware of the idea that picking a typeface is a conscious choice.
Michael Bierut
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Australia is one of the few places that I can think of where the cities, at least those I've been to, seem to have strikingly different characters and visual textures. To an American like me, there's basically Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane and the rest is all bush.
Michael Bierut
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Australia has always put out some good design, particularly environmental graphics. I associate that with Australia, more so that a lot of other places. Whether that has anything to do with the landscape, who knows?
Michael Bierut
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The problem contains the solution.
Michael Bierut
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The truth about logos is that they are not that hard to do.
Michael Bierut