Best 2876 quotes in «design quotes» category

Think of it this way: if you wandered into a cave and saw scratched into the wall some markings which on closer inspection read "Gary woz ere", how would you think that they got there? Would you guess that a river had run through and eroded the wall into a shape? Would you think that perhaps a bear had been sharpening his claws on the rough surface? Or would you be sensible and immediately recognise that someone called Gary, who was probably a bit of a yob, had been through and wanted to leave a message for the world?

Think of the billions of trillions of snowflakes, and the billions of trillions of hydrogen and oxygen molecules in every single one of them. It makes you wonder, doesn’t it, who wrote the laws for the wind and the rain, the snow and the dew? I’ve tried to work it out, but it makes my head spin.

This “solution” to pollution – dilution – is an outdated and ineffective response that does not examine the design that caused the pollution in the first place. The essential flaw remains: badly designed materials and systems that are unsuitable for indoor use.

This relationship, often called the Golden mean, has been discovered and rediscovered at various times in history as a unique proportion believed to have both aesthetic and mystic significance. That the Egyptians knew of it and used it seems certain.

Those who believe in quality produce quality goods. Those who love quality buy quality.

To attempt to build up theories of art, or to form a new style, would be an act of supreme folly. It would be at once to reject the experiences and accumulated knowledge of thousands of years. On the contrary, we should regard as our inheritance all the successful labours of the past, not blindly following them, but employ simply as guides to find the true path.

To clarify, *add* data.

Trust me: if it doesn’t match: it will clash! Focusing on a stunning complimentary color instead of a close-but-not-quite-right one is one of the most helpful contributions you can make to the design.

To have a style is to be stuck.

To provide simple scientific solutions to complex design problems is the job of an Engineer

Twenty-six letters: Marjorie Morningstar or Ulysses. The man-made world means exactly that. There isn't an inch of it that doesn't have to be dealt with, figured out, executed. And it's waiting for you to decide what it's going to look like.

Trying to become something in a world where everyone wants to become something is a thing that needs God's programming.

...use design as a secret disguise to infiltrate whatever world you want to go into. If you do that over and over again, and then translate that interest and curiosity into the work that you’re doing, you’ll do great.

Unfortunately, there are designers and marketing people who intentionally look down on the consumer with the notion that vulgarity has a definite appeal to the masses, and therefore they supply the market with a continuos flow of crude and vulgar design. I consider this action criminal since it is producing visual pollution that is degrading our environment just like all other types of pollution.

Unless materials are specifically designed to ultimately become safe food for nature, composting can present problems as well.

User interface is the process of shifting from chaotic complexity to elegant simplicity.

We are marginally—but crucially—less likely to question the soundness of an article about a rationale for going to war when it comes presented beneath the neo-Gothic Cheltenham typeface of the New York Times, or to probe the coherence of a thesis defending a presidential budget when it is laid out in the sober yet sensuous columns of Le Monde's Fenway font. Brands alone dissuade us from picking sceptically at their underlying content.

V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.' Notice the 'glimpse' part of this. First the glimpse. Then the glimpse gives life, turned into something that illuminates the moment and may, if we're lucky -- that word again -- have even further ranging consequences and meaning. The short story writer's task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He'll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things: of how things out there really are and how he sees those things -- like no one else sees them. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to life the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right they can hit all the notes.

We have an internal check and balance system. By design we are so filled with possibility, opportunity, with greatness that when we live small, within the bottom of our capability, we innately know we should be living greater than that, and it creates a disconnect inside that leads us to feeling empty, unhappy, maybe even depressed.

We live someone else’s life without trying to understand and become what we are really designed to be

We're not making slides, we design it.

We therefore find that the triangles and rectangles herein described, enclose a large majority of the temples and cathedrals of the Greek and Gothic masters, for we have seen that the rectangle of the Egyptian triangle is a perfect generative medium, its ratio of five in width to eight in length 'encouraging impressions of contrast between horizontal and vertical lines' or spaces; and the same practically may be said of the Pythagorean triangle

We should not be afraid of mathematics. If you already understand nature, you understand mathematics.

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.

What is the “Once upon a time” of your brand story? Ask yourself this: “How does what I’m building help consumers close the gap between who they are today and who they want to be tomorrow?

What a graphic designer tries to do is make sure the typography is emotionally consistent with the brand.

What I should have said is that he thinks that there is a conflict between evolutionary biology and theism. Dennett thinks that evolutionary theory shows that it is irrational to believe that God exists; he thinks that the theory has this consequence because he thinks that the Design Argument was the only remotely plausible argument for God’s existence and evolutionary theory destroyed that argument.

What many refer to as intuition, then, is not the untaught or unteachable but instead is a learned understanding and respect of process, molded by experience and refined over a great deal of time and practice.

What about confusing clutter? Information overload? Doesn't data have to be "boiled down" and "simplified"? These common questions miss the point, for the quantity of detail is an issue completely separate from the difficulty of reading. Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information.

What makes Helvetica more beautiful is the word "Helvetica" as a logotype in its typeface. It just makes the rest of the alphabets effective.

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 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.

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

What several decades of research has revealed about Earth's location within the vastness of the cosmos can be summed up in this statement: the ideal place for any kind of life as we know it turns out to be a solar system like ours, within a galaxy like the Milky Way, within a supercluster of galaxies like the Virgo supercluster, within a super-supercluster like the Laniakea super-supercluser. In other words we happen to live in the best, perhaps the one and only, neighborhood that allows not only for physical life's existence but also for it's enduring survival.

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...

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

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 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 typography is on point, words become images.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.