Fingerspitzengefühl
Sunday 5 May 2013
I found this delightful German word in Oliver Reichenstein’s fine piece Learning to see. He writes about design that combines functional and aesthetic value—You don’t get there with cosmetics, you get there by taking care of the details, by polishing and refining what you have. This is ultimately a matter of trained taste, or what German speakers call “Fingerspitzengefühl” (literally, “finger-tip-feeling”). He adds a photo of Jan Tschichold to illustrate.
Photograph of Jan Tschischold, who oversaw the redesign of 500 Penguin paperbacks in the 1940s, designed the elegant and readable typeface Sabon, and brought a refined taste and sensibility to the design of books and type. According to Linotype, Frank Bolliger took this exquisite photo of him in 1962.