Type Crime: Dumb quotes

FREE ADVICE

	It is easier to talk than to listen.
Think more, design less.	Pay attention to your clients, your users, your readers, and your friends. Your design will get better as you listen to other people.
Many desperate acts of design (drop shadows, gradients and the gratuitous use of transparency) are committed in the void left by a strong concept.	Design is an art of situations.
Say more, write less.	Designers respond to a need, a problem, a circumstance, that arises in the world. The best work is produced in relation to interesting situations.
Just as designers should avoid filling space with arbitrary visual effects, writers should remember that no one loves their words as much as they do.	No job is too small.
Spend more, buy less.	A graphic designer can set out to change the world one business card at a time—as long as it is the business card of a really interesting person.
Cheap stuff is usually cheap because of how it’s made, what it’s made of, and who made it. Buy better quality goods, less often.	An interface reveals itself at its point of failure.
May your thoughts be deep and your wounds be shallow.	Design helps the systems of daily life run smoothly. Sometimes, however, design should expose the system, revealing its construction and politics.
Always work with a sharp blade. Many late-night accidents involve dull X-Acto blades. Protect your printouts from senseless bloodshed.	The idea is the machine that makes the art.
Density is the new white space.	(Courtesy of Sol Lewitt.) A strong concept can drive decisions about form, while formal experiments can lead to powerful concepts.
On page and screen, a rich texture of information can function better than sparseness and isolation.	The early bird gets to work before everyone else.
Make the shoe fit, not the foot.	Know (and use) your best time for thinking: early in the morning, late at night, or even, in rare circumstances, during class or between nine and five.
Rather than force content into rigid containers, create systems that are flexible and responsive to the material they are intended to accommodate.	Build the discourse.
Make it bigger.	Design is social. It lives in society, it creates society, and it needs a society of its owns. Read, write, and talk about design whenever you can.
(Courtesy of Paula Scher) Amateur typographers make their type too big. Experienced designers, however, make their type too tiny.	Go forth and reproduce.