“Because design developed over the years into a commercial entity, where time is money and business is big, the design of printed materials became more a matter of efficiency than of clarity and beauty. This degradation of the profession resulted in, among other problems, certain new typefaces being designed not according to typographic but commercial considerations. Such developments can only be explained as criminal.
Most designers are criminal.
A designer is criminal because his profession is one of those specializations that the world can easily do without; he is criminal because he sells contrived ideas about order and objectivity while in reality he is obliterating content by pouring a tasteless sauce over the assignments that are entrusted to him.
Nowhere does chaos and subjectivity dominate as much as in today’s graphic designs. In the name of “design,” numerous useful existing designs have been maimed or replaced by logos, corporate identities or pictograms. There is even an organization for designers; in other words, organized crime.”
— Piet Schreuders (via Lay In, Lay Out, 1977)