Steven Heller > Quotes

“Typefaces are to the written word what different dialects are to different languages.”
― Steven Heller

“the method is still the same: appeal to weakness, bolster myth, and massage fantasy.”
― Steven Heller, Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design

“While photographs certainly attest to Nazi crimes, the magnitude of Nazi genocide demands that every trace of the regime be forever remembered. The various symbols devised by the Nazi image-makers for the most sophisticated visual identity of any nation are a vivid reminder of the systematic torture and murder engaged in by this totalitarian state. These pictures, signs, and emblems are not merely clip art for contemporary designers to toy with as they please, but evidence of crimes against humanity.”
― Steven Heller, Design Culture: An Anthology of Writing from the AIGA Journal of Graphic Design

“Belief systems, whether graceful and efficacious, or painful and destructive, are formed in a multitude of ways: modeling; learning models; circumstances; traumas; repetition of events; and suggestions; etc. It”
― Steven Heller, Monsters and Magical Sticks: There's No Such Thing As Hypnosis?

“I believe that design must be integrally wedded to editorial content. Some people read images, others read words, but most of us read both. So the overall design, art, photography, text, and sometimes even the typography should be, in the best of cases, considered “content.” Hence the art director’s content must complement the editor’s content.”
― Steven Heller, The Education of an Art Director

“While [Frank H.] Young added, 'In a good modern layout the principles of all good layout still prevail . . . cohesion, legibility, movement, emphasis, simplicity, and continuity.”
― Steven Heller, Streamline: American Art Deco Graphic Design

“However, [Edmund G. Gress] wrote, " we must not simplify to such an extent that life and movement are gone. That is where those persons go wrong who claim that type was made to read, and nothing else matters but the setting up of a paragraph in a legible type so that it can be easily read. We do not read everything that appears in print, but do read that which appears interesting.”
― Steven Heller, Streamline: American Art Deco Graphic Design