Design is the practiced and intentional combination of poetry with pragmatism.
John Maeda ➥
The complexity of systems and shortage of natural resources should compel a change of individual attitudes and attitudes as a society. We learn as individuals and we learn as a group. We are beginning to understand the changes that we are only just seeing. We must take notice with increasing soberness and, hopefully, with growing alertness and rationalism.
Dieter Rams ➥
To use design to impress, to polish things up, to make them chic, is no design at all. This is packaging.
Dieter Rams ➥
Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak — and speak in such a way that people will remember it.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ➥
The first exception should be the hardest one to make. Once you’ve made one, each additional exception gets exponentially easier. Beware that first exception.
Jason Fried ➥
What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: curious and teachable.
Roger Ebert ➥
Always remember, your focus determines your reality.
George Lucas ➥
Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi ➥
Creativity is intelligence having fun.
Albert Einstein ➥
Only things that are allowed to age last forever.
Stephanie Troeth ➥
Details in typefaces are not to be seen but felt.
Erik Spiekermann ➥
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
John Maeda ➥
Hardly anyone can discern good from bad typography, but everybody can feel it.
Oliver Reichenstein ➥
If you stimulate curiosity, you've got the spark for learning.
Marjorie Scardino ➥
Things that are easy to use survive, regardless of what is fashionable, and people want to use them forever. But if things are created merely for a passing vogue and not for a purpose, people soon get bored with them and throw them away. The fundamental problem is that many products are created to be sold, not used.
Sori Yanagi ➥
If something is going to be better, it is new, and if it’s new you are confronting problems and challenges you don’t have references for. To solve and address those requires a remarkable focus. There’s a sense of being inquisitive and optimistic, and you don’t see those in combination very often.
Jonathan Ive ➥
What really matters is clarity. Clarity in visual design. Clarity in copywriting. Clarity in purpose, mission, and statement. Clarity allows someone to “get it” while simplicity only allows someone to “see it.”
Jason Fried ➥
Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does Nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous.
Leonardo da Vinci ➥
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Leonardo da Vinci ➥
We’re not here to simply satisfy. We’re here to make the best products in the world for our customers. We’re here to delight beyond expectations. We’re here to give people a combination of things they can’t get anywhere else.
Jason Fried ➥
Time and attention are different things. Time is something you use. Attention is something you spend.
Jason Fried ➥
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
Frédéric Chopin ➥
Focus is a verb. It is not something we achieve. It is something we persistently pursue.
Gregory McKeown ➥
Complexity happens by default. Simplicity happens only by design.
Gregory McKeown ➥
Having small touches of colour makes it more colourful than having the whole thing in colour.
Dieter Rams ➥
Everything should be as simple as possible — but no simpler.
Albert Einstein ➥
Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.
Jeffrey Zeldman ➥
Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
Oscar Wilde ➥
There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence.
Massimo Vignelli ➥
People ignore design that ignores people.
Frank Chimero ➥
Have no fear of perfection — you’ll never reach it.
Salvador Dali ➥
Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
Steve Jobs ➥
Good design is innovative. Good design makes a product useful. Good design is aesthetic. Good design makes a product understandable. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design is honest. Good design is long-lasting. Good design is thorough down to the last detail. Good design is environmentally friendly. Good design is as little design as possible.
Dieter Rams ➥
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery ➥
Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.
Paul Rand ➥
The past is the best thing that ever happened. Learn from it.
Massimo Vignelli ➥
Everything is the product of the mind. Everything that is ugly is the product of ugly minds. Beauty is a by-product of intellectual elegance.
Massimo Vignelli ➥
Visual strength is an expression of intellectual elegance and should not be confused with just visual impact (often obtrusive and vulgar).
Massimo Vignelli ➥
Good design stands by itself, without explanations or apologies. It represents the fulfilment of a successful process in all its beauty.
Massimo Vignelli ➥
If by simplifying you've lost clarity, you haven't simplified.
Massimo Vignelli ➥
We despise the culture of obsolescence, the culture of waste, the cult of the ephemeral.
Massimo Vignelli ➥
You can reach timelessness if you look for the essence of things and not the appearance. The appearance is transitory — the appearance is fashion, the appearance is trendiness — but the essence is timeless.
Massimo Vignelli ➥