Design Quotes

I believe I’m very normal. I’m hyper-normal. I’m more normal than anyone else I know. I think my thoughts, my indulgences, my desires, my pleasures may at first appear different, but that is only because they are more normal, not because they are more esoteric.I believe I am bored when other people are bored, only faster. I am interested when others are interested, only more interested. But I also think I’m less, rather than more, intelligent than other people.By indulging my interests through my life, and perhaps because of rather than despite many failures, I have been able to design my life.

Richard Saul Wurman

You cannot defend your design without knowing what you're designing for.

I.M. Pei

[Public housing projects] are not lacking in natural leaders,' [Ellen Lurie, a social worker in East Harlem] says. 'They contain people with real ability, wonderful people many of them, but the typical sequence is that in the course of organization leaders have found each other, gotten all involved in each others' social lives, and have ended up talking to nobody but each other. They have not found their followers. Everything tends to degenerate into ineffective cliques, as a natural course. There is no normal public life. Just the mechanics of people learning what s going on is so difficult. It all makes the simplest social gain extra hard for these people.

Jane Jacobs

Design is, literally, purposeful planning. Graphic Design, then, is the form those plans will take.

Chip Kidd

If the statistics are boring, then you've got the wrong numbers.

Edward R. Tufte

There comes a point when you realize that these things, these brands, aren't "enough." Having more or better or best doesn't provide you with a lasting sense of having more or being better or being best. It's a rather fleeting experience, this romantic attachment to brands, and I find that if I'm not careful, the search for having more or better or best is a precarious journey into the infinite. When you depend on finite objects-or brands-to provide you with a long-term sense of self or love or pride or achievement, you start yourself out on a path with no end. No object, no product, and no brand can provide you with ultimate, infinite satisfaction.

Debbie Millman

Strip your website down to the basics and do a few things really well.

B C Designers

Basic geometric shapes communicate universal qualities common to all cultures. Practical design integrates them appropriately.

Maggie Macnab

In geometry, as in nature, the circle is the archetypal shape of wholeness and inclusion. It is an effective shape for nonprofits or community-focused efforts.

Maggie Macnab

Branding is simply pattern recognition, established across multiple tiers of application and fueled by the energy of money.

Maggie Macnab

Optimal design delivers information in ways that are useful, beautiful and improve the experience of all involved: audience, client and designer.

Maggie Macnab

A company has integrity when its words and actions consistently match the branding effort.

Maggie Macnab

A distinctive appearance and a simple set of characteristics lead to an extremely flexible brand. (pg. 38)

Woodrow Phoenix

We are … the un-proud non-possessors of objects whose chief substance is that of the transient symbol. Our Puritan fear of the love of things turns out to have been groundless after all, for we do not love things or even possess them: they pass through our lives as barium passes through the digestive tract, unassimilated, their function merely to flash signals along the way.

Ralph Caplan

It's not all that important that you be able to originate brilliant ideas... The more important talent is to be able to recognize good ideas from other people.

Eric S. Raymond

Our head is designed to broaden our capability of analyzing facts, events and draw the right conclusions

Sunday Adelaja

In a clock, stop but one wheel and you stop every wheel, because they are dependent upon one other. So when God has ordered a thing for the present to be thus and thus, how do you know how many things depend upon this thing? God may have some work to do twenty years hence that depends on this passage of providence that falls out this day or this week.

Jeremiah Burroughs

Design a life! Don't maintain it.

Shannon L. Alder

Simplicity is all but nothing that's there.

Shawn Lukas

Good design is as little as possible. Less, but better, because it concentrates on the essential aspects,  and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.

Dieter Rams

Early on, Mike Markkula had taught Jobs to "impute" - to understand that people do judge a book by its cover - and therefore to make sure all the trappings and packaging of Apple signaled that there was a beautiful gem inside. Whether it's an iPod Mini, or a MacBook Pro, Apple customers know the feeling of opening up the well-crafted box and finding the product nestled in an inviting fashion. "Steve and I spend a lot of time on the packaging," said Ive. "I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.

Walter Isaacson

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

John Maeda

design is so important because chaos is so hard

Jules Feiffer

The birds do not sing, clouds remain of rubber, glass, steel. A stone has lodged in the engine block, the process of rusting has begun. And then darkness, a cold wind, a shred of clothing fluttering where it is snagged on one of the doors which, quite unscathed, lies flat in the grass. And then daylight, changing temperature, a night of cold rain, the short-lived presence of a scavenging rodent. And despite all this chemistry of time, nothing has disturbed the essential integrity of our tableau of chaos, the point being that if design inevitably surrenders to debris, debris inevitably reveals its innate design.

John Hawkes

A chair is the first thing you need when you don’t really need anything, and is therefore a peculiarly compelling symbol of civilization. For it is civilization, not survival, that requires design.

Ralph Caplan

The future will look futuristic only because we will be trying to make it look futuristic.

Anonymous

Your style guide is your most loyal brand protector.

Dane Brookes

Embrace iteration as the road to improvement, but don't let that lull you into rolling out poorly-thought-out crap.

Kate O'Neill

It may be necessary to change our brand, catch phrases, strategy, design, etc. once in awhile. It may give us competitive advantages. But a change that demands the change of the SOUL of who we're doesn't deserve to be entertained.

Assegid Habtewold

The late eighties was a good vintage. ID was not yet fashionable so a lot of people were doing it for the right reasons - to make good design, not become stars.

Leander Kahney

All our media are given over to things that are better left unsaid.

Ralph Caplan

All of science is largely formalized common sense.

Nancy Pearcey

For us to deem a work of architecture elegant, it is hence not enough that it look simple: we must feel that the simplicity it displays has been hard won, that it flows from the resolution of demanding technical or natural predicament. Thus we call the Shaker staircase in Pleasant Hill elegant because we know--without ever having constructed one ourselves--that a staircase is a site complexity, and that combinations of treads, risers and banisters rarely approach the sober intelligibility of the Sharkers' work. We deem a modern Swiss house elegant because we not how seamlessly its windows have been joined to their concrete walls, and how neatly the usual clutter of construction has been resolved away. We admire starkly simple works that we intuit would, without immense effort, have appeared very complicated. (p 209)

Alain de Botton

If I had to drink water like my cat, I’d croak over dead in no time. Maybe it’s like eating rice with chop sticks? Both are absurdly difficult and unfathomable for me. Not that I am into ‘ease’ (clearly a review of my life shouts otherwise), just some things obviously take time and talent I do not inherently possess. I move on to things I AM designed for!

Rhonda Louise Robbins

One of the talents of the [late] great Steve Jobs is that he [knew] how to design Medusa-like products. While every Macintosh model has had flaws (some more than others), most of them have has a sexiness and a design sensibility that has turned many consumers into instant converts. Macintosh owners upgrade far more often than most computer users for precisely this reason.” (p.98)

Seth Godin

aesthetic isn't simply about good design for good design's sake.

Noah Kerner

Any product that needs a manual to work is broken.

Elon Musk

Designer turns daily common objects to sexy and interesting stuff but not necessarily functional.

Baris Gencel

Some websites are completely optimized for simple conver- sion, and it’s easy to tell. The design centers on one clear call to action, a vivid lozenge labeled with a verb.

Erika Hall

Some websites are completely optimized for simple conversion, and it’s easy to tell. The design centers on one clear call to action, a vivid lozenge labeled with a verb.

Erika Hall

Beauty of office, is profession in place

Hicham Zinalabdin

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Antoine De Saint Exupery

Cities and landscapes are illustrations of our spiritual and material worth. They not only express our values but give them a tangible reality. They determine the way in which we use or squander our energy, time, and land resources.

Leon Krier

We interrogate the world by making.

Bill Bendyshe Burnett

In School of One, students have daily "playlists" of their learning tasks that are attuned to each student's learning needs, based on that student's readiness and learning style. For example, Julia is way ahead of grade level in math and learns best in small groups, so her playlist might include three or four videos matched to her aptitude level, a thirty-minute one-on-one tutoring session with her teacher, and a small group activity in which she works on a math puzzle with three peers at similar aptitude levels. There are assessments built into each activity so that data can be fed back to the teacher to choose appropriate tasks for the next playlist.

Eric Ries

Conjugation of the irregular verb “to design”:I create, You interfere, He gets in the way.We cooperate, You obstruct, They conspire.

David K. Brown

We’ve all been in positions where we felt out of place or not accepted for whatever reason. For me, that’s been my life. I’ve always been that person that stood out. And what makes you an outcast is what makes you unique, and you should harness that. Being a black sheep gives you creative license to do sh*t differently.

Andre Hueston Mack

Sometimes the most complex problems can be solved with the simplest solutions.

Bijan Shrestha

Ask one question: Would a Millennial (anyone born between 1980 and 2000) look forward to working here?Try this exercise. Take a group of people into a large, open room with tackable wall surfaces or whiteboards. Give them large sheets of paper, sticky notes, markers, and tape. Ask them to create a concept for a work environment (don't say “office”) using the following words: high-energy, collaborative, healthy, productive, engaging, innovative, interactive, high-tech, and regenerating.

Rex Miller Sr.

And not just the right thing; it’s profoundly the right thing to do, because the one argument for accessibility that doesn’t get made nearly often enough is how extraordinarily better it makes some people’s lives. How many opportunities do we have to dramatically improve people’s lives just by doing our job a little better?

Steve Krug

The trick to having good ideas is not to sit around in glorious isolation and try to think big thoughts. The trick is to get more parts on the table.

Steven Johnson

Instead of chasing the idea of truth, what we should be doing is embracing the medium of drawing and using it for a purpose that fulfils our needs as an artist or designer.

Peter Stanyer

I appreciate a book intended to be judged by its cover. The insincere readers are often weeded out while the sincere readers remain curious.

Criss Jami

Design is an art, creative artist must have a beautiful mind

Bhupesh B. Patil

Each artwork requires its own design

Siren Waroe

Steve and I spent a lot of time on the packaging," said Ive. " I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.

Walter Isaacson

Often we don’t see the majesty of God’s design because we’re caught up in the mediocrity of our own designs.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

Perceiving the world as well designed and thus the product of a designer, and even seeing divine providence in the daily affairs of life, may be the product of a brain adapted to finding patterns in nature. (38)

Michael Shermer

for Steve, less is always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box with fewer elements, it’s better, it’s simpler, and it’s at the forefront of technology. That’s where Steve likes to be, in both his products and his stores.

Walter Isaacson

So that’s our approach. Very simple, and we’re really shooting for Museum of Modern Art quality. The way we’re running the company, the product design, the advertising, it all comes down to this: Let’s make it simple. Really simple.” Apple’s design mantra would remain the one featured on its first brochure: “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Walter Isaacson

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