Best 2876 quotes in «design quotes» category

What was the power that turned the worm into a moth? It was greater than any power the Builders had had, he was sure of that. The power that ran the city of Ember was feeble by comparison...

When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning-rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with the enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it as an impious attempt to defeat the will of God. For, as all right-thinking people were aware, lightning is sent by God to punish impiety or some other grave sin—the virtuous are never struck by lightning. Therefore if God wants to strike any one, Benjamin Franklin [and his lightning-rod] ought not to defeat His design; indeed, to do so is helping criminals to escape. But God was equal to the occasion, if we are to believe the eminent Dr. Price, one of the leading divines of Boston. Lightning having been rendered ineffectual by the 'iron points invented by the sagacious Dr. Franklin,' Massachusetts was shaken by earthquakes, which Dr. Price perceived to be due to God's wrath at the 'iron points.' In a sermon on the subject he said, 'In Boston are more erected than elsewhere in New England, and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. Oh! there is no getting out of the mighty hand of God.' Apparently, however, Providence gave up all hope of curing Boston of its wickedness, for, though lightning-rods became more and more common, earthquakes in Massachusetts have remained rare.

Whenever something is engineered as complex, it is designed to keep you simple.

When I was working for a fashion company, one of my assignments was to design a shopping bag for their stores. They had been using cheap disposable plastic bags. I suggested a switch to heavy-duty paper bags with nice printing and rope handles. In other words, something people would want to actually carry around more than once. This was before the prevalence of cloth shopping bags, but the company still went for it. The stores even used less bags overall because the cashiers who filled them viewed the new bags as more precious objects.

When you design, solve things in the simplest way possible. Your goal should be simplicity, not 'How can I apply a pattern to this problem.

While [Frank H.] Young added, 'In a good modern layout the principles of all good layout still prevail . . . cohesion, legibility, movement, emphasis, simplicity, and continuity.

With making changes, the difficult part of trying to implement a new way, idea or thought, is getting people to believe the effect of your notion, and have them believe in themselves of adapting to something new.

When a small, unassuming object exceeds our expectations, we are not only surprised but pleased. Our usual reaction is something like, "That little thing did all that?" Simplicity is about the unexpected pleasure derived from what is likely to be insignificant and would otherwise go unnoticed. The smaller the object, the more forgiving we can be when it misbehaves.

When Design become Useless it becomes Art. Yesterday's Artisans are today's Artists.

When one ponders on the tremendous journey of evolution over the past three billion years or so, the prodigious wealth of structures it has engendered, and the extraordinarily effective teleonomic performances of living beings from bacteria to man, one may well find oneself beginning to doubt again whether all this could conceivably be the product of an enormous lottery presided over by natural selection, blindly picking the rare winners from among numbers drawn at random. [Nevertheless,] a detailed review of the accumulated modern evidence [shows] that this conception alone is compatible with the facts.

When typography is on point, words become images.

When we all play our part the world will run as designed. Do your part and do it now!

Without the Nazis fewer people would have heard of the Bauhaus today and it would almost certainly seem a little less important. It is a pleasant irony.

With your depth of field and curious soul, allowing something to evolve or to see meaning in playful accidents can make the difference between creating the same old thing, or something that is unique, valuable, lasting, beautiful.

Work was intended not to give a man a reason to live, but rather to give him a means to live.

Writers and people who had command of words were respected and feared as people who manipulated magic. In latter times I think that artists and writers have allowed themselves to be sold down the river. They have accepted the prevailing belief that art and writing are merely forms of entertainment. They’re not seen as transformative forces that can change a human being; that can change a society. They are seen as simple entertainment; things with which we can fill 20 minutes, half an hour, while we’re waiting to die.

Writers express their thoughts through words; designers express their hearts through designs that speak words.

You all know the argument from design: everything in the world is made just so that we can manage to live in the world, and if the world was ever so little different, we could not manage to live in it. That is the argument from design. It sometimes takes a rather curious form; for instance, it is argued that rabbits have white tails in order to be easy to shoot. I do not know how rabbits would view that application.

You are the architect of your own future, so design your future with uncompromising sincerity.

You can invoke neither time nor space nor matter not energy nor the laws of nature to explain the origin of the universe. General relativity points to the need for a cause that transcends those domains. ~Stephen C. Meyer, PHD~

You humans are so short-lived that I must remake the pattern over and over again. You don't seem to realize that each time you change your mind or make a choice, you send me back to the loom to plot a new design.

Your brand story’s “happily ever after” involves open wallets.

With an architect as your guide, you can responsibly stop worrying about what spaces someone else might want in a house and focus only on those things your house should include.

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

Your mind controls your actions and that means when your mind gives you designed thoughts, your actions too are going to be designed actions!

You don’t get to decide the truth. Other people have their own experiences, just as valid. This is easy to forget. Your slice of life seems so large and unmistakeable, like a mirage of wholeness from where you stand. But it is your job to know better and not confuse your small piece for the whole, even if you sometimes forget. Life is big—much bigger than just yours. This is the only note to self: other people are real. That’s all there is to learn.

Your style guide is your most loyal brand protector.

Your objective should always be to eliminate instructions entirely by making everything self-explanatory, or as close to it as possible. When instructions are absolutely necessary, cut them back to a bare minimum.

You see, the penis, it's so graceless, wouldn't you agree? When it's cold and shrivelled up, it looks like W.H. Auden in his old age; when it's hot, it flops and dangles about in a ridiculous way; when it's excited, it looks so pained and earnest you'd think it was going to burst into tears. And the scrotum! To think that something so vital to the survival of the species, fully responsible for 50 per cent of the ingredients--though none of the work--should hang freely from the body in a tiny, defenceless bag of skin. One whack, one bite, one paw-scratch--and it's just the right level, too, for your average animal, a dog, a lion, a sabre-tooth tiger--and that's it, end of story. Don't you think it should get better protection? Behind some bone, for example, like us? What could be better than our nicely tapered entrance? It's discreet and stylish, everything is cleverly and compactly encased in the body, with nothing hanging out within easy reach of a closing subway door, there's a neat triangle of hair above it, like a road sign, should you lose your way--it's perfect. The penis is just such a lousy design. It's pre-Scandinavian. Pre-Bauhaus, even.

You were born to journey in the direction of your purpose. Anything that halts your progress is contrary to your design.

You were designed to be a blessing but there are those who must learn the hardest way; to these group you were sent as a lesson.

A bad website is like a grumpy salesperson.

A book has to dig through the wounds, more, it has cause a new one, a book it has to be dangerous.

Above all else, align with customers. Win when they win. Win only when they win.

Above all, John Galliano menswear is all about good design. And men have been short-changed by good design for too long.

A brute force solution that works is better than an elegant solution that doesn't work.

Absolutists frighten me. During all the endless discussions on my blog about evolution, intelligent design, God, and the afterworld, numbering altogether thousands of comments, I have never named my beliefs, although readers have freely informed me that I am an atheist, and agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist - which I am.

Your life success is well designed by the mental transformation you experience. That mental transformation guides you to construct powerful decisions. You can't live life so well without mental make-ups.

You want me to explain myself! give me a brush, not a pen

You were created, fashioned and designed in a special form to leave in the world something that did not exist before you were born!

90% of what is considered "impossible" is, in fact, possible. The other 10% will become possible with the passage of time & technology.

#3 pencils and quadrille pads.(when asked what CAD tools he used to design the Cray I supercomputer )

A bleak, black book, it engenders awe and despair. I have read it in its entirety 4 1/2 times, each time finding its resonance and beauty so great as to demand another reading. As I read, I found myself devastated by the thoroughness of the book's annihilating sensibility and revived by the beauty of its language, the complexity of its design, the melancholy, horror and stoic sympathy in its rendering of what we used to call the human condition.

About half my designs are controlled fantasy, 15 percent are total madness and the rest are bread-and-butter designs.

Accessible design is good design.

Accessible design is good design - it benefits people who don't have disabilities as well as people who do. Accessibility is all about removing barriers and providing the benefits of technology for everyone.

Accident is design / And design is accident / In a cloud of unknowing.

A challenge to the designers of the world: Make signs unnecessary.

A challenging economy is always good for design. It unites necessity and functionality. You are forced to be creative with poor materials.

A citizen walking through the airport today is bombarded with 1984-style propaganda messages that are designed to make us fear some amorphous threat and also be suspicious of others. The government designs these messages to make us feel dependent and heavily lorded over in every aspect of our lives. These messages are becoming ever more pervasive, hitting us even in grocery stores when we are shopping.