Walter Tracy on Typography

In the preface of Letters of Credit, Tracy argues:

The use of typography is a matter of taste as well as sense; and the fact that typographic letter forms are an inexhaustible source of interest and pleasure is a thing to be grateful for.

His view on type as human creation:

Not long ago it was taken for granted that the people most interested in type faces were those who used them, or actually created them: typographers, publishers, printers and, of course, type designers themselves. But in recent years another set of people, quite different from those with direct involvement, have developed an interest in printing types. They are the academics—the mathematicians, computer scientists, psychologists, even philosophers—who have found it worth their time to theorise about the nature of letter forms as human creation, one of the things that other animals do not have.

He concludes:

Typography may be no more than ‘a minor technicality of civilised life’, as Stanley Morison remarked, but it deserves the best we can give it.