And As a Writer With the Pen

Every­body thinks that he knows an A when he sees it, but only the few extra­or­di­nary ratio­nal minds can dis­tin­guish between a good one and a bad one, or can demon­strate pre­cisely what con­sti­tutes A-​​ness. When is an A not an A? Or when is an R not an R? It is clear that for any let­ter there is some sort of norm. To dis­cover this norm is obvi­ously the first thing to be done.

MyFonts posts an ‘inter­view’ with long-​​deceased Eric Gill on leg­i­bil­ity, fine let­ter­ing, the moral qual­i­ties of type and the beauty of marks upon stone.

So we have the designer who designs what he never makes and the worker who minds the machine which makes what he never designs. And we have the sales­man who nei­ther designs things nor minds machines but is sup­posed to know what the pub­lic wants. But the pub­lic doesn’t know what it wants, and it has no means of find­ing out. [Gill, via MyFonts Cre­ative Char­ac­ters]

For now, I fit into the sales­man category.