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.
Interpretation
Legibility and beauty in design are closely connected, and good type design should be effortlessly intuitive.
Adrian Frutiger emphasizes the significance of balancing legibility and aesthetic beauty in typographic design. He argues that while both elements are vital, the impact of type should be subtle enough that the reader engages with the content without being distracted by the design itself.
In practice
During a presentation on graphic design principles, this quote can illustrate the harmony between form and function.
If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The spoon and the letter are tools; one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page... When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful.
Well-written novels make you more empathetic towards other people. You can identify with someone who isn't you. You can change your identity. A 14-year-old boy can become Anna Karenina. It is a miracle.
As creators, our pursuit of perfection might be misguided, particularly if it comes at the expense of the things that matter.
If the communication is perfect, the words have life, and that is all there is to good writing, putting down on the paper words which dance and weep and make love and fight and kiss and perform miracles.
A surprising proportion of mathematicians are accomplished musicians. Is it because music and mathematics share patterns that are beautiful?
The sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would express bright yellow with base notes, or dark lake with the treble.
When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films.
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