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Simplicity, wit, and good typography.

Michael Bierut

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Michael Bierut
Age: 54
Designer
Graphic Designer
Cleveland
Ohio
Good
Typography
Wit
Simplicity
Creativity
Design

More quotes by 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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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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I'm not sure about my design work every time.
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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We use the word typography to describe two different things: the design of letterforms, and the layout of typeset passages on a page. Both of those experiences are really important to communicating information, especially when that information involves complex ideas.
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 think that you could design a terrible logo for a good company with great people and they could build it into a great program. Alternatively you could design what seems to be a brilliant logo for people who are not smart or energetic or are incapable of associating with anything positive and it would become a terrible logo.
Michael Bierut
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Most processes leave out the stuff no one wants to talk about: magic, intuition and leaps of faith.
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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I've heard some designers talk about the design process being centred on invention, starting with a blank slate. I admire that and occasionally I'm capable of that, but I have to admit that I really have trouble working with completely open briefs.
Michael Bierut
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I had a lot of enthusiasms that were very contradictory, I was never very doctrinaire in the type of design I wanted to do.
Michael Bierut
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When it comes to working on identities, a lot of the time I find myself working with a company that has been around for a while. No matter what they say their goal is, the history and the impression that they have already made in the minds of the public is a real thing that you have to deal with.
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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We get used to things, and we like reading the way we're used to reading.
Michael Bierut
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I'm always conscious of the context, the history, the specific environment of anything that I design and what it is going to be operating within.
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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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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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 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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Graphic design is the fiction that anticipates the fact.
Michael Bierut