Designer, implementor, user, writer A Fragment by Donald Knuth dl.acm.org Thus, I came to the conclusion that the designer of a new system must not only be the implementor and the first large-scale user; the designer should also write the first user manual. The separation of any of these four components would have hurt TeX significantly. If I had not participated fully in all these activities, literally hundreds of improvements would never have been made, because I would never have thought of them or perceived why they were important. Eating your own dog food making
A state of energetic repose Read the text before designing it. Discover the outer logic of the typography in the inner logic of the text. Make the visible relationship between the text and other elements (photographs, captions, tables, diagrams, notes) a reflection of their real relationship. Give full typographic attention even to incidental details. Invite the reader into the text. Reveal the tenor and meaning of the text. Clarify the structure and the order of the text. Link the text with other existing elements. Induce a state of energetic repose, which is the ideal condition for reading. Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style The inner nature of material typography