Robert Bringhurst
Robert Bringhurst
Robert Bringhurst OCis a Canadian poet, typographer and author. Bringhurst has translated substantial works from Haida and Navajo, as well as classical Greek and Arabic. He wrote The Elements of Typographic Style – a reference book of typefaces, glyphs and the visual and geometric arrangement of type. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in June 2013...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth16 October 1946
CountryCanada
Robert Bringhurst quotes about
writing purpose literature
Literature in the written sense represents the triumph of language over writing: the subversion of writing for purposes that have little or nothing to do with social and economic control.
philosophy littles derivatives
With type as with philosophy, music and food, it is better to have a little of the best than to be swamped with the derivative, the careless, the routine.
men sheep needs
A man who would letterspace lower case would steal sheep, Frederic Goudy liked to say. If this wisdom needs updating, it is chiefly to add that a woman who would letterspace lower case would steal sheep as well .
culture enough given
When you die, your culture takes you in, and then, if you've given enough, your place is near the centre.
writing technology style
Typographic style is founded not on any one technology of typesetting or printing, but on the primitive yet subtle craft of writing.
design durability language
Typography at its best is a visual form of language linking timelessness and time.
giving popularity process
Popularity isn't just something that happens. You have to give something in exchange for it, and that's the dangerous part of the process.
mean writing thinking
To design things means to interfere with things: to think of how they might be and to alter how they are. Design is to making as writing is to speech: it is an ordinary physical activity pushed to a conscious edge. That interference with the given world can still be founded on admiration. Where it is not, what is the point of designing at all?
thinking way made
Poetry, I'm often told, is something made of words. I think it really goes the other way around: words are made of poetry.
writing thinking civilization
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.
space choices arbitrary
Space in typography is like time in music. It is infinitely divisible, but a few proportional intervals can be much more useful than a limitless choice of arbitrary quantities.
mean typography break
By all means break the rules...
dark men space
In the nineteenth century, which was a dark and inflationary age in typography, man compositors were encouraged to stuff extra space between sentences. Generations of twentieth-century typists were then taught to do the same, by hitting the spacebar twice after every period. Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning this quaint Victorian habit.
fashion order goal
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.