7. Type ornaments have their place ... but an ornament designed for general use has no particular significance.
8. A brilliantly designed book can't save a dull or mediocre text.
9. A page of type can be a thing of unique, arresting beauty.
10. Mere type legibility is to a book as mere shelter is to architecture.
11. Book design should be a synonym for the arrangement and integration of materials—paper, binding, illustration, type and space.
My friends of the musical world believe that music is the most important thing in life. Painters are absolutely certain that the reformation will come only through an understanding of art. Acquaintances among the engineers are sure that by technological development alone can emancipation come to man, while scientists rightfully take the credit for progress in the contemporary world. Friends in industry insist that mass production is the great panacea. The photographers can prove that photography makes the pictorial painters unnecessary, and the writers I have encountered are convinced that the written word is the one route to world unity.
However, the painter ... the musician ... the engineer ... the photographer ... the industrialist ... the scientist ... and the writer have a rendezvous with the book. Here, the knowledge, the romance, the fiction, the facts, the speculations, the opinions, and the accomplishments of the world are made permanently articulate.
This is our day, our time, our environment. We can make a statement, through the employment of design, that is valid and true ... not divorced from tradition, but using the great works of the past as a springboard toward new horizons!